


Concurrent sentence

by thiefofbluefire



Series: Query: is it illegal to save the world by creating a paradox? [8]
Category: Mega Man: Fully Charged (Cartoon), Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types, Rockman | Mega Man Classic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied Relationships, Minor Injuries, Multiple Crossovers, Mystery, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Multiple, Partners in Crime, Self-Harm, Time Travel, Trust Issues, Undercover, Unreliable Narrator, switching POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2020-10-26 20:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiefofbluefire/pseuds/thiefofbluefire
Summary: Something you learn when investigating a crime is that none of the parties involved are going to tell the exact same story.





	1. Blame not the clown for acting the part.

To say that Quint was waiting for something to happen wouldn't have been inaccurate. Over had left him about five, six minutes ago for something that he had refused to explain the details of. Which, while routine when it came to the white armored Android, was quickly becoming one of Quint's pet peeves.  
He likened it to a stop and go traffic jam; Over would pop in and things would happen and the ball would be rolling, then he would pop out and everything would grind to an irritating halt.

Rinse, repeat

Quint wasn't sure if the feeling was intended on the time traveling Android's part, or if it was yet another side effect of the mostly disengaged WAR protocols in his CPU.

Quint had agreed to a few things when Over had pulled him aside and offered him a purpose along with food and repairs, and the deactivation of those systems was one of them.

WAR was meant to be insurance that Quint would always want to kill his counterpart, Mega man. Lots of the Wily numbers had the same protocols in place, but the rest were always more enthusiastic about it than he was. When Quint was beaten in his fight with Mega Man, he found out that it also applied to anyone and everyone that doctor Light held dear, and that if Quint made visual contact with anyone from the life he used to have, he would have an urge to kill them. Which is why he fled to anywhere and everywhere he knew doctor Light would never take his family.

Which is where Over found him.

The Android was savvy enough to disengage many of the WAR protocols, but not all of them. To try and make up for that, he also replaced Quint's respiratory filters and re-wired his optical sensors to detect the light/color spectrum better. So everything wasn't exactly in gray-scale anymore, but Quint had noticed that red and green were almost indistinguishable, and occasional flipped from one to the other depending on what he was looking at.  
So, still legally colorblind, but Quint didn't complain.

He was so happy to see that Over was wearing blue when he first opened his eyes again that he'd cried.

Though, the more Quint thought about it, he wasn't sure if Over's eyes were light red or green. It was a fairly simple curiosity, but the lack of a definitive answer was almost as annoying as Over's stop and go style of getting work done.

Speaking of which, it was as Quint was having that very debate that Over decided to make another reappearance. However, when Quint turned to regard him, he saw Mega man. A child of Light. Who Quint once was, and who he was meant to be hiding from.

Mega man seemed to have a similar thought, as he raised his Mega buster at the same time that Quint did.

"Put it down, both of you! It isn't what you think, Quint." The white Android commanded, looking and sounding annoyed.

"Then What Is it?!" Quint growled, his buster whirring to life.

"Yeah Dimitri! We'd sure like to know!" Mega man agreed, his own buster charging with a shrill whine.

Over harrumphed and put up his hands between the two combat ready robots with placating motions.

"Mega man, you don't know who this is." He began, addressing the blue robot before turning to his green counterpart.  
"And Quint, you don't know him either."

Over's open palms then turned to pointing fingers as he gestured to the two boys individually.

"Aki light, Quint Wily. Now put down the busters," then he grinned stupidly. "Busters."

It took Quint a second, but..

"Di... Did you just make a pun?!" The Wily bot exclaimed. 

Mega man groaned and the power of his mega buster petered out.

"I felt that one." He said, looking officially not in the mood.

Quint had to admit he felt the same. So he lowered his weapon. After, Over's grin adjusted to something more genuine and he stood up straighter with his hands at his sides.

"Look," he began. "Armor down, both of you, I'll need you to go in civies for this next part."

"Armor down?" Mega man repeated.

Over made a face and circled a finger next to his head as he replied.

"De-meganize, whatever. Just turn off the mega busters and the spinning rims."

The blue robot flicked his eyes to Quint suspiciously, pursing his lips. The white Android followed his gaze and let out a sigh before rolling his own eyes.

"C'mon, who's he gonna tell?" Over asked rhetorically. "Knight? Obsidian? Quint here would sooner shoot him." Then he turned to the Wily bot. "Tell him Quint."

"Who's Obsidian?"

"Part time robot rights activist, part time leader of dangerous criminal robot organization, full time jerk-face?" The blue fighter robot answered, making a 'you serious?' kind of face.

"Think old man W, except he's legitimately dangerous by himself." Over elaborated with a wave.

Quint parsed both claims.  
Jerk face? Not someone Quint would think of getting along with.  
Part time robot rights activist? Quint was very aware of the many reasons why robots didn't have rights, and he wasn't in any rush to see the law changed.  
Leader of dangerous organization? Definitely someone who Quint wouldn't lend his services to.  
Legitimately dangerous by himself?

Implying that Wily wasn't?

"... This person is your enemy. Obsidian..." Quint mused, annunciating the name to try and come up with a face to put to it. When nothing came up, he continued plainly with; "Well, he certainly wouldn't be any friend of mine."

And with that, Quint reached into his programming and disengaged his battle protocols, reverting his appearance to that of an ordinary boy.  
Over followed suit and changed into his vest and bodysuit, looking at Mega man expectantly.

"Go on," Over encouraged. "You too."

Mega man hesitated, eyeing both of them suspiciously, but eventually caved and disengaged his armored appearance. The resulting flash of light blotted Quint's vision for a moment, but as he blinked his focus back, he received the sight he wasn't expecting.

A boy, but not the boy that Quint knew as Rock Light.

His hair was done differently, as were his clothes. Namely the stylishly short sleeved hoodie and the long designer pants; nothing that the modestly dressed Rock, or Quint himself, would've actually worn.  
His eyes were different as well. When he was in his armor, they were the bright blue associated with the creations of doctor Light. Out of armor though, this Mega man truly had brown eyes. Just brown.

"... You're..."  
Quint wasn't sure what to say, but thankfully the boy standing before him had no such trouble.

"Yeah, You don't look how I thought you would either." He said a little sheepishly.

Quint felt his nose scrunch up.  
"What did you think I looked like?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it." The boy laughed, certainly lying.

A high pitched beep sounded from Over's person, and he lifted an arm to check out a white, digital Walkman thing on his wrist. The white Android frowned an turned around.

"Introduce yourselves," he tossed over his shoulder. "I gotta check on something."

The boy in the blue hoodie looked at the Android as he stepped off to the side with narrow eyes, humming suspiciously. Quint knew what he was probably feeling; confused, a little distressed, disoriented, uncertain about the way Over as a character made him feel.  
The time traveler had that affect on people, or so Quint assumed. In fact, this Mega man didn't even call Over by his name, did he?

"You called him Dimitri." The Wily bot commented, drawing the other boy's attention. "That's- um." He cleared his throat, trying sound more friendly. "How come?"

"Dimitri?" The boy replied, half distracted by the looks of it. "That's his name, isn't it?"

"...No." Quint stated plainly. He forgot how Over loved his anonymity, especially when introducing himself to someone for the first time. Of course this was no different.

The boy looked from the Android with an 'oh' before he regarded the Wily bot fully. The silence after stretched uncomfortably, filled only with the Android quietly muttering to himself in German; the Berlin dialect, or at least Quint thought so.

"Sooooooo," the boy in blue drawled before holding out his hand. "I'm Aki, Aki Light."

"Aki Light." Quint repeated, committing the name to memory.

"Yeah." Aki confirmed. "He said that your name was...Wily?"

That made Quint frown deeply. He was a Wily bot, to be sure, but he never went by the name. But that Aki thought so wasn't his fault.

"It's just Quint." He corrected, then emphasized so that Over could hear too. "I Don't Have A Last Name."

Aki coughed into a fist to dispel some of the awkward air.

"Odd." He remarked. "My best friend's last name is Wily." Then he tapped a finger on his chin. "Maybe that's..."

Aki didn't get further than that, as he made a face that signaled fear. Quint blinked and realized that he must've been glaring. The idea of doctor Wily being allies with Mega Man without strings attached was hard enough to believe, but the idea of them being best friends didn't compute in Quint's mind at all. 

At. All.

Quint heard Over clear his throat, and he glanced to him briefly. The Android was looking at him from the corner of his eye, before he muttered three words.

"Nicht der shuld."

That is to say, 'not his fault.'

Quint processed the statement as Over looked back to his Walkman.

The Android was right; this wasn't Aki's fault. Quint's constant predicament had nothing to do with him. No sense in being angry. Not even over Aki's poor choice of friends.

"Sorry," Quint said, clearing his throat. "That's probably why he called me that; To make you put down your weapon. You wouldn't shoot someone who might be related to a friend."

Aki blinked and blew out a breath, making a frustrated face.

"sheesh."

Over must not have been very tactful when he collected the boy, so Quint tried not to make him more uncomfortable.

"But," he began, holding out his hand to reinitiate Aki's handshake. "Nor would I. It's nice to meet you, Aki. Uh, Though I don't suppose you prefer, Mega man, at all?" Quint added lightly.

Aki gripped his hand and shook easily with a chuckle.  
"Just... Don't tell anyone."

"The only person I could really tell already knows, apparently." Quint replied matter-of-factly.

"So," Aki began after letting go of Quint's hand. "You wouldn't happen to know what he has in mind for us?"

So Over hadn't explained the plan to him.

"Some Androids from a future version of this timeline just got put in jail for doing a number on some buildings downtown." The Wily bot explained plainly.

"Whoa! Hold The phone!" Aki exclaimed, making a 'Time out' motion with his hands. "The future?!"

And apparently the plan wasn't the only thing that Over failed to brief the boy on.

"I take it he didn't actually tell you what he does for a living either?" Quint asked, shifting weight to lean on one foot.

Aki dropped his hands and shook his head.

"Well, no, all he did was trick me, laugh at me, say I was okay, and then suddenly!" He threw his hands up. "I'm here! I would've remembered if he said anything about time travel!"

Quint was a little surprised. Over had tried something pretty weird, and kinda creepy, when he first met the Wily bot, but he never tried to trick him. That Over had seemingly switched tactics was something to think about, but at another time.

"Over, uh, that's his real name," Quint began, gesturing to the Android. "He has the ability to hop through time and space. I'm not sure of the details, but he's made it his mission to make this happen. I myself am from about... Six years ago? He saved me from an... Unfortunate situation."

"Oh yeah?" Aki awed. "Wow... Wait. Make what happen exactly?"

"The Androids." Quint said with a thumb hooked over his shoulder. "He brought them backwards through time to try and contain a kind of weapon." Then he felt his face drop. "Sort of."

"Sort of?" Aki asked with a hand on the chin. "Whaddya mean by that?"

"I mean it's not exactly a 'weapon'." The Wily bot elaborated, squaring his feet and lifting his hands for emphasis. "It's like millions of micro-bots. They're programmed to work in unison to perform various tasks for the user. Trouble is that they're infected with a virus that is commanding them to puppeteer a host with the potential to cause lots of damage."

"Like zombies?" Aki guessed, eyes a little wide.

Caught off guard, Quint's jaw hung open for a moment. Aki guessed that pretty quick.

"No?" Quint tried to explain, since that wasn't exactly right. "Um... Zombie. Singular tense. It can only affect maybe one or two hosts at a time. Or so Over tells me."

Aki hummed, thinking.  
"Okay okay, I see how things are going. So what's our plan of attack? How do we defeat the zombie micro-bots thingies?"

And Quint officially hated the word.

"... it's called the Sand. And we aren't supposed to get close to it. You know, in case it gets funny ideas about possessing us." The Wily bot deadpanned, and Aki visibly deflated.

"Oh. Well, duh." He said casually, trying to save face.

"But as for 'fighting it', there's a bit of a problem." Quint continued. "The Androids are the only ones who can destroy it at it's viral core and we need to keep the local authorities, as well as this timeline's Mega man and doctor Light off their backs."

"... Okay? How come we have to do that? Couldn't they get the Good guild in on what's going on and help them with this?" Aki suggested.

"... The what-what?" Quint annunciated, understanding Aki's words separately, but not together.

"Because robots don't really have rights here, Aki." Over interjected, stepping back into the conversation.  
"If Obsidian lived in this world, his campaign would have more fuel behind it. But since he doesn't, things are different." The Android shook his head and braced a fist on a hip, using his other for emphasis.

"Anyone who displays violent behavior gets rounded up and taken to an expert for analysis. When that happens, they have to be detained to evaluate their mental status. See if there's signs of tampering. And, depending on that, then the robot gets either reset, reprogrammed, or shut down for dismantling."

Aki recoiled at 'dismantling'

"That's awful!" He sneered. "You mean they'd-!? Ugh!"

"Well they wouldn't do that to you!" Over exclaimed, taking a step back and waving his hand placatingly.

Quint cleared his throat to get the attention back his way.

"He's right. Besides, that last option almost never happens." Quint crossed his arms. "Dr Light is very compassionate and willing to give more than just a second chance. Sometimes it's undeserved, but that's part of being human; mistakes happen." Then he muttered. "Even with the best intentions."

The boy in blue processed the statement, and Quint didn't miss how Over returned to a more relaxed posture when Aki spoke again.

"... yeah, that does sound like Dad. But, wait." He scrunched his eyebrows. "Why do we have to keep these future bots Out of jail? Won't they just get evaluated and proven to be fine?"

So Mega man was still the good doctor Light's son in other worlds. Interesting.

"That's part of the problem, kid." Over admitted with a grimace.

"huh?"

"They aren't made the same way the robots of this point in time are." The Time traveler elaborated with a finger pointing at the ground.  
"They aren't even 'robots' per say. They're closer to what you are, Aki; They have free will and are capable of thoughts outside of any situational source code." Then he pointed upwards and made a circling motion. 

"Therefore, if they got passed to the specialist, doc Light, they wouldn't actually be able to fit any criteria for 'Sanity' that he'd be looking for, not on the technical level."  
Over shook his head.  
"Then they'd have to remain detained for closer analysis, and a lotta yada yada that gives the Sand more time to make mayhem. Time that this world doesn't have. Quint and I have the reploids taken care of, we just need your help with something related."

'so Aki here is free thinking too?' Quint thought to himself. Meanwhile, the boy in question put a hand on his chin, thinking.  
Though, before he said anything, Over piped up again.

"Don't worry, this is the only thing I'll ask your assistance on," he said quickly. "And if you're worried about shady practices, honestly it's the least shady part of the job."

Then the Android shrugged.

"And you can say no, of course, I'd understand." Then he looked hard at the boy.  
"But if you don't, you do me this favor, I'll owe you one. And after this part's done, I'll send you back home with a funny story to tell your sister."

Aki hummed as he parsed the words. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face that Quint didn't miss, but he gave the Android a sly smirk.

"What will you be asking of me? I'll... Consider it." He said confidently.

Over returned the smirk and unzipped his vest before reaching inside and pulling out a couple of green slips of laminated paper, as well as little banners on sticks.  
"I need you two to be spotters at the fair."

"Spotters?" Quint asked, confused, and he didn't miss how Aki's bravado suddenly blew right out of him.

Liking their reactions, Over gave a smug chuckle as he handed them the little articles. Taking the paper slip into their hands, Quint and Aki realized that they were express tickets that would allow them to get special treatments for free and to cut in lines for the go-carts and other amusements available at the Autumn celebration fair. All of which was marked by a gold star above a cartoon ferris wheel.

Quint never had this kind of privilege, even as Rock; to say having it in his hands now was jarring would be an understatement.

"Your job is to make sure that nothing is going wrong on the crowd level." The Android explained. "The boys from the future are about to conduct a delicate operation, the nature of which I won't tell you so you won't go looking to blow it for them. But if either of you realize that something has gone wrong, you're on damage control. Make sure that folks don't go running towards the danger."

"What will you be doing?" Quint asked, recovering from his initial shock and compiling the incoming data into a makeshift objective, spinning the little banner in his fingers.

"Making sure that they have a sound exit without being seen myself." Over replied casually.

"What if someone recognizes me?" The Wily bot asked with a frown. 

Aki hummed in confusion.

"Why would that- wait." Then his eyes widened comically as he looked at the Wily bot.  
"Do you have people looking for you?"

"Not outright," Quint explained. "But if I'm seen by anyone from Doctor Light's family, there might be trouble." The scenario had come up in the numbers and he would rather have a game plan for it than not.

"This doctor Light, not your Dad, Aki." Over elaborated to the boy in blue. "But, in that case, the first thing you two are going to do is get your faces painted."

Aki scrunched his nose and made another 'you serious' face at the white Android. "Face painting? Really?"

"Don't be like that." Over chided with a grin. "It's like getting a tattoo except your dad won't disapprove of it."

Quint had a feeling that his father's approval wasn't the reason for Aki's reaction.

"Um." He cleared his throat. "Maybe he was confused that your plan for us is essentially just going to the fair and having fun?"

"Don't see what's so confusing about that." Over chuckled before adding, "If everything works out the way we need it to, you two will forget that you're supposed to be keeping an eye out for trouble."

"And if we find trouble?" Aki prodded.

Over looked him up and down and crossed his arms.

"Well for one thing, don't cause a scene by armoring up and trying to start a fight." He instructed matter-of-factly. "The point is to be as normal as possible. You can do that, can't you, Aki?"

"Well yeah, but I was-"

"Keep your powers as a last resort if things start exploding." The time traveler interrupted with narrow eyes. "And I mean EXPLODING. Like a missile, not a sparkler." Then he pointed to the Wily bot. "You too, Quint. Clear?"

Quint nodded, having compiled the necessary data and incorporated it into a mission plan. He was ready. Though, when he looked at his partner, Aki seemed pretty unenthusiastic about the arrangement. So, he figured that working around the boy was most likely going to be a factor.

Hopefully all would go well.


	2. Blame the circus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The meddler's laws of time travel part three.
> 
> Never take a time traveller's words at face value. No matter how vague or obtuse the wording or phrasing, it always means something.

"We've updated shift rotations to a new position every two hours and brought on twelve more officers to buff security." Agent Krantz stated as she tapped out a message on her phone. She was playing it off, Rock could tell, but it was clear that she was quite stressed out about this whole situation.

Not that he blamed her. The androids had all managed to escape custody within eight minutes of each other, all with the equipment used to detain them being either sabotaged, stolen, or outright destroyed.

Nobody was sure exactly what had happened, it had all happened so fast, but the common denominator had been that an external party employing some kind of stealth ability, or maybe something else, had cut power and stolen evidence from lockup before the androids almost spontaneously broke out of their containment.  
Rock thought he heard the name Quint get tossed around during the confusion, but he wasn't sure.

In any case, the breakout was on Agent Krantz' watch, so she had every right to be on edge about the fair. She had every right to buff security the way she was.

"Though I'm not sure if this'll be enough." She spat, putting her phone in the holster with her firearm. "They already got out. And in less than twelve hours at that. Not that they would come here, but I don't trust big congregations of people while they're out and about." She shook her head disapprovingly but put on a smile for doctor Light.

"Still, I'd rather have the extra staff keeping people safe just in case. If something happens, we're here for it." She said, clearly wishing that she could do more.

Rock understood completely.

"We're already grateful for your efforts, agent Krantz," doctor Light assured her, calm and collected. "That you're doing all this extra leaves me at at a loss for words. Thank you for everything."

"Hey, anything to keep peace of mind and help you find out what happened to your daughter and those strange bots." Rosie replied earnestly.

'strange bots.'

It was how everyone was describing the androids that came out of nowhere, battling each other with terrifyingly powerful weapons; the likes of which Rock could only compare to the creations of doctor Wily.

Which made sense, given the initial appearances of the three 'strange bots'.

Recorded_(yesterday)

Rock still felt his fight/flight index calculator initiate a panic state on par with the memories of Ra Moon when he thought about the robot in the basement of the last castle he fought in.

The tall robot, with the exposed circuitry.  
The narrow blue eyes that seemed confused before he just looked excited.  
The huge plume of blond hair, whipping about as he jumped, dashed and thrashed around in that tiny room.

'he's going to kill me'

Rock didn't like thinking about it, but there was no helping it when that same robot, bathed in bright red armor, was armed with some kind of sword slashing at an ugly miasmic mass of purple in a downtown deli.  
The robot was being aided by another one in dark armor with white and red accents, sniping the mass from a distance. Precision weapons against a grotesque creature.

A creature that held the third.

The one in cerulean blue armor that forced everything to stop for the briefest moment.

Rock was barely processing anything properly at the time, something had hit him in the head during the confusion and he was kind of on auto-pilot, but he knew for sure that the reason the thing stopped was because the red and dark blue robots had shielded some bystanders from an exploding bus.

Rock remembered how confused he was to see Wily's terrifying masterpiece jump in front of someone in order to protect them from harm instead of being the cause for it. Remembered the surreal feeling of discovery when the red helmet broke in half and slid off to reveal a scalp of uncontrollably cascading blond hair.

Rock also saw that the android utilizing the evil material was in a position to lunge at the disoriented Wily bot, and he had jumped in between the purple compound and it's prey.

Roll screamed.

The possessed robot touched Rock exactly once, making as if to strangle him, before recoiling as if burned by the contact.

"... Sh... Sh-shoot me...!" he had said, and Rock responded with his Mega buster.

End of record compilation_

"Hey, you alright, Mega man?" Agent Krantz prompted gently, trying to get Rock's attention.

"Yeah, just..." he wanted to find her. Roll had gone missing maybe an hour or so after the androids were taken into custody.

Of course they'd looked. The downtown ruins, the house, Light labs, everywhere. It was like she was never there at all.  
Seven hours of searching, and then Rock had gotten the alert that the androids had escaped from lockup.

"Roll wanted to come here more than anything." Rock sighed. "She was looking forward to it so much..." 

She said she was meeting with her pen pal at the Pizza parlor across the street from the deli.  
Roll had never done a pen pal thing before, but she was excited. Playfully evasive when asked about the person on the other side of her letters too, and Rock couldn't help but think it was great how giddy she always got about her secret someone.

She said she'd introduce them at the fair.

She wanted to watch the fireworks with everyone together.

What had happened to Roll?  
She wasn't at the lab or the house, and she wasn't in town or by their side either.

"I'd rather be out and about looking for her," Rock admitted honestly. "Keeping up appearances is important and all, but I don't like not knowing where Roll went. Where any of them went."

There had been a stink put up over whether or not doctor Light and Mega man would show up at this fair months before any of this happened. It's a festival dedicated to the start of Fall, and doctor Light had been so tied up in his lab that he was basically dragged out by the public that wanted to know what the father of robotics was doing.

"I know, son. I want to go looking too." Doctor Light murmured sympathetically. He looked like he hadn't slept at all last night.

'Should stay close to Dad.' Rock thought to himself.  
'Dad's upset about Roll.'

"But there's been no threads to grab onto!" He hissed, staring at his boots. "She just...!"

Disappeared.

"I'll be heading back downtown to comb for evidence soon, Mega man." Rosie stated, a bit out of the blue. "We might find something if we retrace her steps again. You can come with me if you want."

Rock parsed this. "I can?"

Rosie gave a firm but friendly nod at the question.  
"If you really don't want to be here, you don't have to. I'm sure everyone would understand."

If Rock went with her, then he would be leaving doctor Light alone with the public. If he stayed with his father, then agent Krantz wouldn't have his help.

"When are you heading out?" Rock asked. More data input would make the decision easier.

"Not immediately," Rosie explained, reaching for her phone after hearing it vibrate. She frowned at it, made a couple of swipes with a finger, and put it back in the holster.

"I still have a couple of things to assess with the boys here," she continued. "Twenty minutes tops."

Rock looked to doctor Light, who gave a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

'I Should stay close to Dad.  
Dad is upset about Roll.  
Dad doesn't want me to go.'

If he went with agent Krantz, doctor Light would be all alone.  
If he stayed with his Dad, the search would go nowhere that he would know of.  
Heck, the search might go nowhere even if he tried looking with agent Krantz.

"Can I think about it for a bit?" Rock asked politely. Maybe if he had some time to process more variables, then he'd know for sure what was the best call.

Agent Krantz shrugged.

Doctor Light rested a reassuring hand on Rock's shoulder.

"It's alright, son. I'll still be here."

\----

'You know, it'd be easier for X to escape your shadow if he didn't like it so much.'

"This is dumb." Zero grumbled.

"You say that one more time and you're getting tripped," X quipped from beneath him.

Probably the most useful thing about X's shadow armor was it's unique ability to allow the user to basically phase through solid matter as long as a shadow was being cast over the matter in question. Currently, X was walking in time with Zero's footfalls inside the ground itself.  
With the sun overhead at 1400 hours, and Zero's half-tied plume of hair casting a nice wide shadow, X was invisible. Zero could still feel the boots standing on the soles of his feet though. Which was surreal, but if he ever had the thought that X had wandered off, he just had to kick the dirt a bit and get X to squeak. Oversensitive feet you see. No getting separated easily with this setup.

That being said, Zero still couldn't stand it being out in the open without active armor.

"I see things are going well on your end." Axl's voice sang through the comms. Little shit was in stealth mode somewhere above them probably having the time of his life making faces and crude gestures.

"Bite me Axl." Zero responded in kind, pushing the slippery glasses up on his face with a middle finger.

"Quit the sour face," X chided lightly. He seemed to be enjoying himself. "We're nearing position. Axl, status."

"No problems to report from up here. Frankly I'm just glad that you guys got through security."

"They must've beefed it up after our escape." Zero remarked, noting that more guards were on the perimeter and by the high profile stalls. "Which is smart, it's what I'd do."

'Still got through with this shitty disguise though. Someone's getting fired.'

'I had a ticket. They're here to maintain a presence, not to think about everything they see.'

'Just as long as it's something strange, right? Like a ticket suddenly appearing in your pocket?'

"It's worrying that there's so many people here though." X chimed in. "Means that we don't have much wiggle room on top of our already limited supplies and tiny window for success."

Okay, so he Wasn't actually enjoying himself. Damn misdirecting... Though he had a point. Maverick activity usually warranted evacuation of the premises, a backup squad on standby, authority regulation of bystanders to prevent casualties, standard stuff. With only the three of them and not even a navigator for support, it had to be this way.

Zero agreed with X though. The crowd was a bit much to worry about.

"I'd rather it be evacuated too."

'I like it better this way. More risk.'

'Shut up.'

"Certainty of death, small chance of success... Just another day at the office." Axl remarked sarcastically.

"As if." X huffed. "I'd kill for Alia's cushy armchair right now."

That made Zero pause, stopped in his tracks really.

"You sat in the woman's chair?"

"Uh. No." X replied just a little too quickly.

The thing was...  
Alia never let anyone near her workspace, much less her mission chair. Zero remembered a time he overhead her once telling someone after hours in no uncertain terms that if she ever caught someone in her space, she'd fuck them up herself.

And he heard that from prim, pristine, and punctual Alia; who always pulls overtime and never leaves her station for more than three minutes when she's on the clock.  
If X got close enough to know for a fact that Alia's chair was 'cushy', and an 'armchair' at that... then that would mean he snuck into her workspace during one of those 3 minute intervals or after hours when she wasn't there, in which case, why? Or there was no sneaking involved and she LET him sit there.  
But Alia wouldn't do that, unless...

"Oh X, you dog!" Zero laughed, and X promptly, strategically, kicked him in his toe. 

Now that hurt like bashing his foot into an industrial fan, but it Wasn't an outright denial. The red hunter chuckled and snorted into his fist, feeling X's seething, red-faced glare through the ground beneath him.

'Oh that's just precious.'

As they were supposed to be keeping a low profile, X couldn't come out of hiding to kick his ass either, and that made it even better.

The moment didn't last though.

"Hey, heads up," Axl chimed in. "The old man from the photos is on your two o'clock, careful."

Zero cleared his throat and put back on his serious face. The reading glasses slid down his nose for maybe the tenth time that hour and he pushed them back up with a huff. As he did so, he caught who Axl was referring to from the corner of his eye.

Older man, Zero guessed that he was heading into either his sixties or seventies, white hair, bit of a belly, big nose, kind smile.  
A regular Santa Claus type.

'Him.'

The target's father all right. Rotten luck.

"Light.." X murmured distantly, like he forgot the comm channel was still open.

"X?" Zero prodded quietly.

"Keep moving, don't let him see you." X said quickly, tapping his feet to get Zero going. The red hunter winced when he moved his right foot, the one X kicked, but he walked in time with his partner back on track to the target destination. Though Zero would be forgiven for thinking that maybe X was a little eager to get moving

"Are you okay?" The red hunter pressed.

'Him!'

"I'm fine. Don't stop." X assured, sounding not really okay and like stopping would be the healthy thing to do, but he wasn't going to.

\-----

"For the record," came Quint's disapproving voice from somewhere behind Aki. "Ignoring his one condition for you being here in favor of a dozen people stroking your ego by asking for pictures with you is not a good way to earn my respect as your partner, Aki."

Now, the plan was to keep an eye out while looking as normal as possible, but Aki Light had some problems with that.

Don't get him wrong, to an extent, Aki was fine with the unorthodox secret agent thing that what's-his-face was asking for here.  
Aki liked the whole going undercover thing just fine, and having a mysterious partner with him added to the appeal.

But in practice, this whole thing was not what Aki thought he'd be doing today.

Being kidnapped and tossed into a weird undercover mission with the first goal to get face paint not only sounded like a bad video game level, but also stank of something suspicious getting covered up. 

The guy, what was his name again?

"It was something lame, right? Uhh... Like it wasn't a real name I think."

So Mini couldn't remember either.

"It'll come ta me boss! Just lemme think!"

Anyway, totally-not-Dimitri had pointedly excluded the location of the time traveling androids, which Aki thought was odd. From what Quint said, they were the ones in the most trouble, and Aki wanted to see what was so dangerous and important that going to the cops would've been a waste of time.

But no, Russian-chaotique-as-a-dude instead set Aki on 'crowd control' duty with the gloomiest partner ever.  
He was Mega Man for crying out loud, why put him where he couldn't offer much help where the danger really was?

He would've gone ahead and told the guy what he thought about the arrangement, but the thing that made Aki take a step back and hold his tongue was when the guy had offered the option to say 'no' to all of this.

The way he kinda stared Aki down set off danger signals that had Mini ready to meganize him. It was like he was lying about what he was saying, if that makes any sense. 

Like he was saying, "Sure, you can go home if you don't want to do this. PSYCHE!" And then he'd do something...bad.  
Something to keep Aki quiet.  
A 'no loose ends' thing. 

And maybe this was just some stranger danger degrees of paranoia, induced by Way too many movies and TV shows about espionage and noire type action, but Aki had a bad feeling about what's-his-face and what all was going on.

"I swear I'll get his name outta the storage bank eventually, chief."

So, naturally, while Quint was getting face paint, Aki made sure that he felt ready for anything by going Mega. 

"What?" Aki asked lightly. "The guy said to have fun and not look suspicious while you're doing it. There's lots of people dressed like Mega Man here, it'd be weirder not blending with the herd."

Which wasn't a lie. For a fall celebration, there sure was a lot of people in homemade blue armor wandering around. Aki had asked what it was about to someone who reminded him of Man-Man back home, and apparently the call for costume was a show of support for the blue bomber and his efforts against the robots that downright trashed downtown.  
So it turned out that Mega man, in this world, was really important to the city folks. Not that people back home didn't care, but Aki couldn't think of anyone nearly as appreciative of his efforts back home except for Ashley and a select few others, and even they had their strings attached. Maybe he needed to step up his game, get more people to make costumes of him for Halloween.

When Aki meganized, people were immediately awing his appearance and asking for pictures of his "wicked costume." It had gathered a bit of a crowd, and thus naturally, his partner, who seemed like he had some more loyalty to the white Android, disapproved greatly.

"Besides, your face painting was taking actually forever, so the way I see it, this makes things work out." Aki grinned, waving at passerbys as they noticed him.

Which also wasn't a lie; Aki was dead bored while Quint was deciding on a decal with the old lady at the stall.

"Hope you're as careful with that weapon of yours as you are confident that people just like you on principal." Quint pointed out flatly. "You are pointing it at unsuspecting bystanders."

Oh yeah. The shade. 

Quint had been passive aggressively muttering about clueless security guards, pedestrians on the move, and had not stopped looking at Aki like a disapproving nanny from the moment they initially saw each other. Well, not the whole time, Quint cut it out when he was getting painted, but that was it. Now he was right back to it, and tossing some snark Aki's way too, which didn't sit right with him.

"Wow, you're just a ray of sunshine aren't you?" Aki sighed as he turned around to face his partner.

"Don't patronize me." Quint ordered dryly.

"Bad move boss! Bad move!" Mini sputtered, waving his hands around rapidly.

Aki blinked and almost shrank away from the cold, super unimpressed stare that Quint had leveled at him.

He wasn't sure why the green dude seriously didn't like him. Obviously Aki wasn't perfect but they hadn't known each other long enough to get on terms as bad as they seemed to be. It didn't help that Quint was cool as a cucumber in conversation, so Aki couldn't think of anything in particular he'd done that made Quint always look like he wanted to hurt him.

Except for this time, cause he noticed an absolutely adorable smiling cartoon sun painted in bright yellow and deep purple for accents on Quint's left cheek.

'ray of sunshine'

Yep. Aki just said something stupid.

"Oh. I didn't realize that you got the... Happy sun... Face paint." He tried to amend the comment, but the damage was clearly already done and Quint looked So done with him.

The green robot let Aki stew in his immediate and self inflicted embarrassment for a painful half minute before blinking exactly once, tilting his head, and asking plainly;

"... Are you done?"

"Yep." Aki meeped. "Let's just," he cleared his throat, trying to save face. "Try to have fun, shall we?" 

Aki quickly scanned the stalls, trying to find anything that Quint could focus on instead of him. 

Face paint. No, definitely not.

Balloon guy? Probably not a good idea. Quint could glare and pop all of them at once.

Basketball hoop game? Maybe. Maybe not.  
Weren't there supposed to be go-carts here?

"Look! Darts!" Aki pointed to the stall with a wall of balloons and stuffed animals for prizes as he saw it. "You any good at darts?"

Quint raised an eyebrow and looked to where Aki was pointing. When he saw the stall, his withering stare shifted to something along the lines of "interest," suspending Aki's breath.

"... I bet I'm better than you," he said, turning to march towards it.

Relieved that he looked at something else, Aki let out a heap of air and gave a little jump.

"That's the spirit. You're on!"

"Oh my gosh boss! I think he wants ta kill ya!"

If that was true, Aki couldn't say for sure.

What he could say for sure, (after realizing that he had to commit to a game of darts against functionally his baby sitter and forcing himself to calm down cause he wasn't going to lose face) was that Quint was only slightly better at darts than Aki was. Which, honestly, was somehow a low bar to clear.

"You wouldn't think that aiming darts was harder than aiming a buster, huh?" Aki asked casually, spinning a cheap keychain around on a finger after two rounds and about six darts in three balloons.

"It's not. It's just different." Quint stated mildly, clicking the end of the spiffy ballpoint pen he'd won.

"I guess?"

"The average buster shot goes in a straight line based on where you're aiming." Quint began matter-of-factly.  
"This is because of the virtually non-existent weight of the plasma rounds we use, as well as the higher velocity of the shot. With a dart," he then steepled the pen through his fingers and held it like a dart for emphasis.

"The round is obviously heavier, balanced differently, and is definitely not going in a straight line when you throw it. Therefore, throwing a dart warrants aiming higher than the place where you want it to hit, versus a buster, where you just point and shoot. Though that much is only valid if you have a steady hand in the first place, as the buster itself has a weight factor to consider too."

"Huh..." Was Quint geeking out? It didn't immediately sound like it with Quint's flat tone, but if he had that much to say about it, then obviously he'd been stewing on the difference between ammo rounds for a while. Maybe obsessively so.

It reminded Aki fondly of Suna griping over her homework. The way she over-explained the subjects she studied, repeating the teachers words as though they made sense, which they didn't, until they did.

"You sound like my sister..." Aki admitted. He hadn't been gone long, but she was probably already worried. She always was.

At the statement, Quint looked down at his feet and slowed down as he walked, brows pinched.

"... What an odd thing to say." He said, and kept walking.

Aki didn't think so, but then again, it wasn't like gloom-man here knew her.

"I mean, she's smart, really smart. And she talks about stuff like that." Aki tried to explain. Though, calling her just 'smart' was a bit of a disservice, considering all she did for him.

"That..." Quint made a face like he was processing a poorly told pun, mouth slightly moving like abandoned attempts to respond to the comment before he settled on, "I'm... I'm not that smart. It's just darts. It'd be easier if I could tell the balloons apart."

And Aki was the one saying odd things?

"Pfft, as in you can't?" Aki laughed.

"Not really." Quint confirmed plainly as he brought his pen up, staring at it. "Everything there is the same kind of brown and chartreuse."

"...Chartreuse?"

"Chartreuse is a kinda green, boss." Mega Mini supplied. "But, wait. Isn't this a fall celebration?"

Aki hummed, thinking back. None of the balloons were green. Not really. Sure, some were pastel yellow, but not green. The rest were red, some orange, and a couple of black ones were there too. Fall colors. Not green, and certainly not chartreuse. So how come Quint couldn't tell them apart?

"Wait." Aki stopped. "Are you colorblind?"

The green robot boy stopped as well, hesitating, before he muttered a "Yes," while looking down at his feet.

"Oh." 

Suna and Ashley had mentioned going over colorblindness in their biology class. A recessive trait mainly found in human males, something-something commonplace red and green blindness, something-something another reason girls rule.

But with that in mind, Aki never really considered that that a robot could go colorblind.

"Well, sorry."

"For?" Quint asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"Uh" before Aki could explain, he noticed a few people applauding something behind his gloomy partner. He gave it a bit more focus, and saw an old man in a lab coat waving at some of them, chuckling heartily and offering thanks for their attendance.

Aki knew that voice, and that face.

"Dad?"

Quint looked behind himself, visibly flinched, and grabbed Aki's wrist when he made to get a closer look.

"No Aki, don't go towards him." The green robot hissed, not looking Aki in the eye.

"It ain't your Dad, boss." Mini confirmed sympathetically, and he was right.

This doctor Light was shorter, less top-heavy, and had a longer beard and hairstyle. Same face and same voice, but an otherwise completely different person.  
And at his side, shaking hands and giving small smiles to the people in blue costumes, was a boy in bright blue armor; big arms, bigger legs, a shining helmet that the crowd could only copy, and a red robot dog on his heels.

"... The guy sure wasn't kidding when he said another world..." Aki mused.

'If everything works out the way we need it to, you two will forget that you're supposed to be keeping an eye out for trouble.'

Oh.  
Right.

'And you can say No, of course, I'd understand. But if you don't, you do me this favor, I'll owe you one. And after this part's done, I'll send you back home...'

'...he has the ability to hop through time and space...'

The guy. Aki almost forgot why he was here.

'Guess you liked the Russian accent, ay child of light?'

The pit that formed in Aki's stomach. The android.

'G0 âh3ad. Sæy n0. Sèë whā'ht wīll håppēn.'

This wasn't where Aki wanted to be.  
Whatever that guy really wanted from him, here was the real response.

"Is that the Mega Man of this world too?" Aki asked absently.

"Yes," Quint warily responded. "so don't go- what're you-?!"

"Hey, Mega Man!" Aki called over, shrugging off Quint's grip and getting the blue bomber's attention with a wave, along with plenty of passerbys before he struck a pose with a smirk. "Was hoping to get a picture, you mind?"

The other Mega man looked him up and down with awe before approaching Aki with a polite smile.

"With a costume that impressive? Why not?"

\---

"Looks like they're distracted, keep moving." X whispered as Zero pushed through a group of people taking pictures. Which warranted some glares and rude remarks but Zero didn't care, he could see the marked stage from here.

"No signs of the target yet. Moving to next position." Said Axl, and Zero briefly heard the whirring of his thrusters overhead.

"Why's he here?" The red hunter muttered, staying as out of the doctor's sight as he could.

'Doesn't matter, he needs to die.'

"Maybe he's looking for his son." X suggested.

"You think he knows?"

X tried to reply, but instead of anything understandable as words, a deep hiccup sound came out of the commander, followed by a wet cough. Which was weird, and Zero felt X stumble a bit under his feet as well.

"Yeah, I think he'd notice if his son and daughter were missing!" X muttered sarcastically.

'Kill him, do it!'

"No-" Zero was about to argue, to lecture his friend about that abrupt attitude shift, but growled to himself and took a breath. Everyone was just stressed out, X especially because he was never Not stressed out.

"I mean do you think he knows that the target's here?" Zero whispered, calm as he could.

X hummed, considering, then cleared his throat.

"It's possible, but not likely. Not from what I could gather from the photos...Still." a beat. "I'll keep an eye on him from down here until we find the mark."

"Don't get distracted, X."

'Kill doctor Light!'

"I won't." X breathed.

'Turn around! Kill them all!'

\----

"Why doesn't he listen to me?" Quint wondered, exasperated. He'd guessed from Aki's temperament that working with him would be difficult, but not like this.

It was supposed to be difficult. Difficult.

Not Impossible!

What would Over think? What would he say about Aki running around the way he was? All the conceited asking for photos, the cheeky grins and acting like he was in charge? Waving around his mega buster like a toy and jumping at the chance to talk to a celebrity bot.

If he was the Mega man of the world Quint knew, Wily could've only lost to the moron out of luck or... Or something! If he lost at all!

Quint was sorry for whoever Aki was in charge of protecting. They couldn't be safe with someone so immature watching over them. Someone so unprepared for what being Mega man is all about. For what the title entails. For the heartache, the pain, the exhaustion, losing everything in ways he could never predict. The impending doom of his own mortality weighing down on his heart-

"Nicht der shuld."

Not his fault. Not to blame.

As the thought hit him, the Wily bot felt guilty about the previous thoughts he'd had, and about the rude snarks he'd tossed at the other Mega man.

It wasn't Aki's fault that he was like that. He wasn't a moron, in fact, he was quite quick on the uptake, like Quint himself, and respectful of the instants where he made his mistakes. And Quint could respect that.

What he was, was ignorant. Uninformed.

Aki didn't know what hells Quint had gone through, not with the way he ran around like the kid that he was.  
Not with how his eyes crinkled when people fawned over him and paid him compliments for being cool and all the other nice things that people were saying to him.

'Yes, that's right.' Quint realized.

Aki Light was still a kid.

Quint had stopped being a kid a long time ago. Long before he was Quint.

He took a step back and wiped a tear away before it had the chance to escape. After, he crossed his arms and stood by while Aki posed with a painfully large smile next to the person Quint used to be.  
His heart felt heavy, but he held himself back and simply watched.

Photographers came and went from Aki and Rock's bubble of space, offering thanks and prints to the boys and to doctor Light, which Quint decided was just fine. 

But as they began clearing away, he noticed that, in the crowd, there was someone with dark stripes on either side of his face. At first glance, it could've been just face paint, something done at one of the stalls. But Quint knew better; he knew that there were only so many designs at the stations involving that particular color of paint, and none of them were what Quint saw on that person. Quint also realized, despite his colorblindness, that the color was supposed to be a purple. He knew only one person who had purple stripes not painted, but tattooed on his face as a statement of identity.

"Bass?"

Quint remembered the last time he and Bass had seen each other very well. Mostly because it was a bit of an anticlimactic affair.  
Quint had gotten his essentials packed up and was in the process of leaving when he'd spotted Bass in the hallway. Back then he wasn't much more than a prototype meandering through the hallways of the Wily castle, watching where the other robot masters went with an envy in his young red eyes that Quint never saw paralleled.  
Briefly those red eyes had made contact with the blue of Quint's own, before the young robot master had simply shrugged and went into another room, clearly not interested in what he had seen.

It shouldn't have stuck with Quint as long as it had, but it did.

Quint knew who he was, and he was confident that Bass also knew him, but they'd never talked, and Quint never stuck around to see the young robot master grow up.

But he still knew the terror that Bass ended up being.  
Knew that Bass was one of the reasons why Rock knew hell before Wily reprogrammed him. One reason of many why Quint had stopped being a kid those years ago.

He looked to Aki as he was making chatter with Mega man, with the real Rock.

One kid talking to another about anything other than war and loss and heartache.

Then he remembered the androids from the future. Wily's bloodthirsty god of destruction, doctor Light's X factor, the friend they'd brought with them that Over had deemed important enough and busted out of prison himself.

The mission.

They were here, somewhere, looking for dangers of their own.

If Bass found them...

Quint considered his options.

Sure, if doctor Light or Mega man saw Quint, there would be trouble. The kind of trouble that would make him have an identity crisis and supreme guilt over something out of his control.

If Bass saw him... No such trouble.

"Gotta distract Bass..."

\----

"C'mon, Treble, whatcha got?" Bass pressed as his mighty wolf kept his nose planted on the ground to sniff about.

'She swore up and down that she wouldn't miss the fireworks,' the battle robot thought to himself. 'Now that's gonna happen in about five hours.' Then he chanced a look around from under his black hat.

'Her father's over there,' as he spied the one and only doctor Light. And by his side, 'So is the dweeb. But she isn't with them."

"Shieße."

Where could she have gone?

Bass had listened in on the police radio chatter and had heard nothing being done about Roll's absence.  
It was completely possible that they were trying to keep the investigation on the down low, what with the whole android invasion from the future and the fair going on just outside of town, but the least they could do is fucking say something that Bass could actually fucking use!

Treble gave a huff and a low rumbling growl as his ears pinned down. Something had caught his attention.

"Was ist los?" Bass asked, refocused on his wolf companion.

The mechanical wolf rose his hackles and made the gesture of pointing. Bass followed the direction and saw someone staring at him from the crowd.

Initially, he just thought it was some kid, but, remembering how he couldn't just rely on glances anymore, he looked again and registered brown hair, fair skin that had some decal painted on a soft left cheek, and blue eyes.

A striking set of blue eyes that irritated him to the core of his being.

'Dweeb?' He thought. 'fuck, did I just get busted?'

Sure, there were a lot of people here dressed up like the blue bomber, much to Bass' chagrin, but only the dweeb himself had those big blue eyes.  
Though, the kid wasn't in the homemade getup like everyone else. He looked just like Mega man when he was out of his armor. All innocent eyes and round, punchable cheeks, topped with soft, shit-brown hair that Bass was glad Roll didn't have.

'But wait. That couldn't be...' he looked over at the blue armor standing next to Doctor Light. Completely absorbed with taking photos with someone.

Then back at the kid staring at him.

Then back to the doctor and his son talking to a cosplayer.

Then back to the dweeb staring directly fucking at him.

The kid narrowed his eyes and started walking off to the side, against the flow of the crowd.  
As suddenly as Bass had the realization he was being watched, he had another one hit him.

Two dweebs.  
Narrow eyes on one of them that spoke of cold contempt; the kind that Bass couldn't reconcile with the blue twerp that always proposed they stop fighting with hope and disgusting smiles from here to Sunday.  
No, the only robots who knew contempt were the Wily numbers.

That wasn't Roll's brother.

That was one of Bass' own.

But the copy robot had been in the scrap heap for years.

Which could only mean...

"... Quint?" He mouthed.

And then Quint started walking faster.

"HEY! QUINT!"

\---

Rock bumped a fist and smiled as much as he could for the flashing phones and the quality cameras pointing in his face.  
Part of him hoped that the expression was convincing enough, and the rest of him would rather be getting back to agent Krantz about her offer.

More specifically about how he'd decided to come and say hello to the public for a couple of minutes, and then he wanted to join her as she returned downtown to the scene of the crime.  
Part of him felt like he was wasting time, but he was truly thankful for the people's support, and a few pictures with fans who clearly spent more than just some time overnight to make a costume couldn't hurt.

'Be patient,' Rock reminded himself. 'I still have time.'

Thanks were eventually said, warmth to Rock's core, but oddly the cosplayer stayed by his side. Not going with any camera holding passerbys, nor anyone who looked like parents of his. Did he want to get an autograph or something too?  
Rock would be willing, of course, but something about the kid was just a little strange.

"Hey," the cosplayer began, speaking low with a hand cupping his mouth. "Those future bots, you're looking for them, right?"

Rock felt his shoulders tense.  
There it was.

The epitome of Rock's current misery.

The Mystery of the red Wily bot, the dark compound, the bot in blue begging for death, the third party that stole evidence and assaulted the staff on guard, the prize question of where in the world Roll had gone.

"Of course." He answered automatically. "I can't divulge any- wait."

That wasn't right.

It wasn't common knowledge that the androids had gotten out of police custody, or that the investigation wasn't getting any headway.

"How did you know they escaped?" Rock whispered, feeling doctor Light come and lean over his shoulder.

"What's this about?" His father whispered.

The cosplayer looked about with a suspicious expression before he continued.

"Listen. The guy said that they're here, but he didn't say where. They're apparently 'conducting a delicate operation,' and I'm supposed to be on the lookout for trouble."

"What're you talking about-?" Rock sputtered.

"Listen!" The cosplayer hissed, then he put on a big fake smile as some teenagers were walking by with their phones up.  
"Hey there!" He said with a wave, and Rock gave a smile and a slight pose himself.

What was going on?

How could he know what was happening with the investigation?

How could the androids be here at the fair?!

The teens eventually walked away with smirks and chuckles, sharing pictures on their devices. After he was sure they were gone, the cosplayer turned back to Rock, completely serious.

"Look, I was brought here to be on the lookout for trouble by a guy that called himself Dimitri." The cosplayer looked over his shoulder again, continuing without looking directly at Rock.  
"He's got a real name, and I know I heard it get said somewhere," he puffed his cheeks out, frustrated. "But I don't remember it."  
Then he looked between Rock and doctor Light. 

"Anyway, he's a tricky guy, and I'm gonna be honest, he seems like bad news and I would rather work with officials than do all this shady stuff for him. He paired me up with another guy that he brought here." he pointed behind him with a thumb. "My partner should be just over there, but-"

Before the cosplayer could continue his thought, a loud, angry voice that demanded Rock's attention and his combat systems on standby boomed through the air.

"HEY! QUINT!" was all it said.

"Bass?!" Rock knew the voice, and he saw the bounding form of the wolf Treble jump through the shuffling crowd, followed closely by a black form. Bass wasn't in his signature armor by the looks of it, but there was no mistaking the way he charged after his companion.  
Rock also knew the name. And, looking ahead, he saw a tuft of his own brown hair sprinting away from the wolf and his master.  
He never thought he'd see that Wily bot again.

"Quint?!"

"Uh oh." The cosplayer gasped as he started off in the same direction as the rogue Wily bots. "That counts as trouble." 

Then he started running. 

"Good talk, gotta go!"

"Wait!" Doctor Light called after the boy in costume. "You know what's going on?!"

"Nope! Not a clue!" Was the response.

READY_

Rock chased after them all without another word. Something had just happened, and Rock wasn't getting blindsided and letting it get away from him.

\---

The "Shadow realm", for lack of a better name, was essentially an upside down black lake, only populated with the negative images of the shadows that people in the world above cast upon the ground. 

A world that wasn't supposed to be touchable, so of course X had an armor to bypass that particular law of physics. It came with it the price of physical discomfort, but the power of the shadow chip was nothing like any other.

Speaking back to the realm itself, sound was an interesting phenomenon. When audible at all, the waves always became muffled as their unique reverberations sailed through the air sounding underwater, or like harsh whispers.

So understand that for words spoken in the real world to be heard clearly in the shadow realm, they needed to be both poignant, and Loud.

"HEY! QUINT!"

"What now?!" X jumped, startled.

"Some kids are chasing each other." Zero explained casually, shuffling around. An opening in the crowd quickly formed with the scene of children running after each other, and Zero pressed for it.  
X kept pace, making efforts to keep his head high, but there was a struggle to it. He'd had a lump in his throat and his gut was doing summersaults since they had left the condemned building, but he kept that to himself.

'Just the armor,' X told himself before he realized something about the yelling kids.

"Zero," he asked. "Didn't you say that one of the benefactors to your escape was called Quint?"

And Zero slowed down for a second there.

Quint was the only name they'd heard since this started; the only name they could work with, so X wouldn't forget it this early in the game.  
Which made hearing it here a cause for concern for two reasons;

One: why was one of the people complicit in their pretty unlawful escape from containment here at the fair?

And two: what had occurred that warranted such attention on Quint's presence from someone who wasn't the Maverick hunters?

Axl got back on the comm and cut through X's thoughts, because the world doesn't have time for the important questions.

"Guys! Target confirmed!" He called.

"What?!" Zero hissed, picking back up his pace.  
And thus X shoved that train of thought aside entirely, turning his eyes to the image of the fireworks stage before him.

"Repeat! I've confirmed visual on the target! He's behind the sliding wall in the fireworks stage, and it looks like he's gonna go after the security detail! Moving to subdue!" The gunner elaborated firmly.

"Negative! Don't solo engage Axl!" X commanded. "Place markers on the officers but do not engage!"

"But-"

"I'll extract them and get them to safety! Provide support from range while Zero stalls the target!"  
X jumped away from the sync of Zero's footfalls and sprinted to the friendly blips cropping up on his HUD.

They were officially on the clock now.

\---

'Yeah that's it. Come get me and don't think about anything else.' Quint thought to himself in between short breaths. Thank Asimov and Over for new respiratory filters.

"Nowhere to run dweeb!" Bass called after Quint as he pushed through the crowd and took off into the space between the game stalls.

"Says you!" Quint goaded over his shoulder as he made a sharp turn to his right, intending to lead Bass back to the main entrance gates.

Or, at least, that was the plan before something big and quadrepedal jumped through a wall of stuffed animals and ended up in Quint's path. Treble growled as Quint skidded to a stop, his path effectively cut off.

"Oh." The green Wily bot muttered, backing away from the wolf's approach.

Behind him, he heard the tell-tale sounds of boots crunching the gravel and of an armor program materializing.

"I do say so." Bass sneered, sounding just a little winded as he grabbed Quint by the shoulder and whirled him around before using another hand to grab Quint's throat, hoisting him up.

"Spill it, Quint! What're YOU doing here?!" Bass roared.

"Like..." Quint gasped.

This was fine. Bass wasn't in the immediate vicinity of bystanders anymore, being behind a stall, and there wasn't any sign of the reploids near this place either. Given how many people saw them run to this place, and how likely it was that at least someone recognized Bass and Treble running around, the odds of someone following them with legitimate intent as well as ability to help were beyond low.  
Aki was preoccupied with Rock, and shouldn't have been stupid enough to come after them. He knew what the mission was, he'd put the people's safety first if he knew what was good for him.  
The weight of the rest of Quint's body tugged down on his neck, and breathing and speaking were both difficult and painful, but that was fine. So long as Bass stayed the heck away from everyone else, then Quint was okay with the pain.

"Like...I'll tell you... Anything." The green Wily bot ground out, hoping Bass would throw him and try to gun him down, thus giving Quint another opportunity to lead him away.

"Oh no?" The war machine growled. "What if I Order you to?"

Bass? Thinking about what he was doing instead of acting on impulse?

Whoops.

"Don't-!" Quint exclaimed before Bass began speaking firmly, hateful red eyes locked with blue.

"DW specialist: T.S. subject; Null. designation QUINT."

"NO-!" Before Quint could properly object, WAR violently cut through one of the barriers in Quint's conscience set up by Over, causing the Wily bot to seize up and stiffen his arms to his sides, as if at attention. Without the ability to take some of the weight off his neck, he felt the circuitry in his throat pull taught, straining not to break. Quint didn't think Wily trusted Bass to give him that kind of access to the Wily numbers.

"This is an order from your highest command unit!" Bass continued. And, sidenote, well played sir. "Tell me what you are -urk!"

"Back off, buster!" Aki's voice loudly cut in as Quint felt the sensation of being dropped.

The Wily bot's head hit the dirt, and his vision swam and refocused as the WAR order reset in the absence of a complete command.  
He saw Aki sidestep and jump over Treble's charge in defense of his master.

What was that kid doing there?  
Quint made to get up, only to find that his arms were still stiff and his movement restrictive.

Well, Fantastic.

Aki confidently and competently fired three shots from his buster that struck Bass' armor without reflecting, pushing the war machine further away from where the crowd was. Which, while good, was only going to work for so many shots before Bass started returning fire that Aki probably wasn't partial to tanking, even for the sake of someone who might've been behind him.  
Quint reconsidered his plan to fit Aki in and compiled an outline to support him. But then there was the issue of WAR literally holding him down.

'Think, think,' Quint forced himself to focus as he ground his teeth, listening as Aki continued bouncing between Bass and Treble's efforts.  
A thin object in the gravel caught his eye; short, cylindrical, with one end tapering off to a point, and a plunger on the other.

'The pen from the dart game,' Quint realized. 'I must've dropped it. That'll work."

The Wily bot forced his arm to move in the pen's direction until his hand was awkwardly hovering over the object, once he was certain that he could reach it, he clasped his fingers into the dirt around it. WAR fought against every movement as Quint clicked the plunger down, extending the point.

"This is... g..gonna hurt." Quint muttered, preparing himself.

WAR wanted Quint's arm back at it's side? Fine.

With a quick snapping motion, Quint brought the pen down and stabbed it into the side of his leg.  
The pain register screeched in his mind and he let a gasp out through gritted teeth as WAR reconfigured it's priority from  
_standby for command_  
to  
_combat mode_  
thus freeing him from the invisible bonds weighing him down.  
Quint pushed up into a crouch and pulled the pen back out of his leg, grunting with the pain that caused as well. He activated his armor program and reeled his arm back, taking aim.

Sure, a pen can be used as a dart or spear weapon, but Quint was never partial to those. Effective as they are, they lack something that, against an opponent like Bass, can be critical.

Force.

Centripetal Force to be exact.

Throwing a pen like a dart wouldn't make an impact on a powerhouse like Bass, even if it hit a critical area (implying that it would hit him at all).  
However, Bass might've cared more if he was hit with something like a throwing knife.

Bass whistled for Treble to get behind "the dweeb" so they could perform the good ol 'give him a shove so he trips' trick, and Quint used that as his opening. The moment the back of Aki's legs hit Treble's side and the Mega man began to fall, Quint threw the pen hard, and jumped up to chase it in the same breath.

The utensil spun through the air before striking Bass in the eye, and he let out a bark of pain at the contact. As he reached for the stinging optic, Quint ran up and kicked the war machine center mass, sending him flying before he knew what had hit him.

Treble growled and leapt at Quint, sinking his teeth into Quint's left gauntlet as the Wily bot used it to shield himself from greater damage. The wolf dragged the arm down, shaking his head in an attempt to remove the armor. The green Wily bot clenched his jaw at the wolf's weight before both his other hand as well as one of Aki's grabbed onto Treble's frill, where the scruff would be on a normal dog, and ripped the canine out of Quint's personal space.

"I don't like hitting dogs," Aki huffed, winded but keeping his trademark bravado. "Don't be the exception!"

They promptly tossed Treble towards his master, and the wolf took that opportunity to raise his hackles more as his master got back to his feet, still holding his eye.

"Oh great!" Bass sneered, pointing his buster and preparing a charge. "Double dweebs!"

At the suspicion that Bass was only going to use a partial charged shot before following it with rapid fire rounds, Quint sidestepped in front of Aki and brought his arms up to block.  
He wasn't outright injured, he could straight up take at least a partially charged round before he went down, and Aki would have plenty of time to retaliate while the fire wasn't on him.  
It would hurt, but if it was just Quint, that was fine.

"Better check your counting, Bass!" Rang another familiar voice as Bass' buster discharged a single round before a yellow shot smacked his arm, effectively shutting down the war machine's plan of attack.

Quint tanked the shot and glanced over as the real Mega man, Rock, trotted up to his side, megabuster ready and brows drawn down.  
Quint forced himself to focus back on Bass before WAR remembered that combat mode could be useful for carrying out it's long term objective.  
The Wily bot bit his lip as Bass looked between the three of them with more visible confusion than Quint could remember Bass being capable of.

"What the fuck?!" He barked incredulously.

"Whoa! You kiss your mom with that mouth?!" Aki responded, quick as a whip.

Inside, Quint was laughing. About time someone called Bass out on that foul language.

"Stand down Bass!" Rock commanded, easing forward, lowering his buster just enough to speak in earnest with the war machine. "We don't have to fight! Call off Treble too!"

Rock had said it once, he'd said it a thousand times. This made it Quint's second time hearing it from an outside perspective, and given his own experience he only partially trusted that Rock meant it.

"Maybe you don't have to fight, dweeb." Bass snarled, patting off his buster arm in the same instant as he began charging energy into it. "But if there's three of you here, then I not only want to, but I'm gonna have to!"

"Incoming!" Quint called out as Bass fired a barrage of plasma pellets out towards the three of them.  
The Wily bot held his resolve to tank the rounds he could while Rock returned fire.

Aki on the other hand, live wire that he was, leapt up into the air above Bass' assault, shooting two partially charged blasts towards the war machine.

However, Bass was prepared for such. He sidestepped the first blast as it hit the ground and jumped onto Treble for an instant.  
Quint knew what he was doing, but static came from his mouth before words could.

Treble sprung Bass into the air and the war machine dashed forward as Aki floundered under gravity's rules. Bass took another blast from Aki's buster without a care and grabbed the boy by his arm mid-air before flinging him down into Rock, who fumbled to catch him and ended up stumbling back onto the ground.

"Cause I've fucked up if there's THREE Mega dweebs!" Bass called as he landed behind Quint, buster ready. "Gotta fix that!"

Well at least from Bass' new position with his back to the fair, Quint didn't have to play shield.

The Wily bot jumped into a roll to avoid another barrage of rapid fire pellets before running up into Bass' personal space again with fists raised. The war machine caught the first punch, but grunted wetly when Quint laid a few hard jabs with his other hand into his less armored middle. Bass reverted his buster back into an arm to clock Quint in the head before grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving him away, jumping back before pellets from both Rock and Aki could tag him.

"So, you have a live weapon configuration?!" Rock asked from his kneeling position.

"I had the safety on!" Aki pointed out, defensive. "Try to overheat his buster!"

"Over-r-heat?!" Quint exclaimed. 

Wait. Were his ears just ringing from the punch, or was that hard to pronounce?

"What kinda shit hardware do you think I'm packing?!" Bass yelled, clearly offended as he charged three shots for all three of his opponents.  
If Bass was angry, then they could draw this out more.

"D-did-d-dn't you know?" Quint tried to goad, but wow that was rough. His stutter was acting up again.

Before any retorts or replies came, a loud gunshot rang out and Bass lurched forward. Quint flinched at the volume, detected something from behind him running up fast, ducked out to the side as Treble dashed to his master's side, and felt his eyes widen when he heard a feminine voice yell out;

"FBI! PUT YOUR HANDS UP!"

Behind Bass was four human agents in uniforms fitting their department with pistols raised. In front of them was a woman with dark skin and bright green, no, red. Red hair and fierce eyes.

Hers was a face Quint didn't think he'd have remembered after all this time, if he'd ever see it again.

"Agent Krantz!" Rock called out, a twinge of relief in his voice.

"We're cool!" Aki said quickly, putting his hand and buster next to his ears. "We're cool, don't shoot!"

"You shot me, bitch?!" Bass howled as Treble growled at his side.

And Quint didn't much care for that tone directed at her.

"I did it once, I'll put the next one in your head," agent Krantz growled, no less ferocious. "You're outnumbered, outgunned, and with nowhere to run. Mega man, secure him!"

"Weak ass, puny human-"

"Don't be stupid, Bass!" Rock chided the war machine as he made to approach, hesitating when Treble growled at him. "Easy boy."

Two guns trained on Treble, and tension visibly worked it's way into Bass' posture.

The thought of 'Damage control' occurred to Quint at the sight, and grim simulations of an unnecessarily violent scene played through the numbers as well with Bass, Rock and Aki at the center of it.

They didn't need that. No one did.  
Sure, his German wasn't great, and his stutter was a factor again, but...

"Treble!" Quint called with a clap of his hands, drawing the wolf's attention before kneeling down. "Komm zu mir!"

Come to me.

A beat passed, but recognition registered in Treble's eyes and he pressed his ears down before looking up at Bass with a whine. The war machine's snarl faded to a stressed clench of teeth as he looked around at the humans, at Rock, Aki, then at Quint.

'I know.' Quint mouthed to the other Wily bot. This was a collective lose-lose situation for him and unfortunately the best option was taking the surrender when it was offered.  
The war machine was violent and stubborn and too proud of it, but this was a hell that didn't need raising. Surely he could see that.

'let it go.'

"You can't tell him what to do, dweeb." Bass sighed before snapping fingers and putting his hands up. "Gehen." He said to his wolf with a chin tilt towards Quint.

Treble padded past Rock, and Quint didn't miss how Aki's jaw dropped as the wolf approached the green Wily bot with his tail between his legs and his ears flat.

A set of handcuffs were tossed to Rock, but before he could set them upon Bass' wrists, Treble's ears shot up and the wolf looked up and away from Quint at the moment everyone heard a loud shriek from across the fair.

Red and green fireworks exploded from the stage in swaths of sparks and rained gold in the sky, catching everyone's attention.

"Bass?!" Rock exclaimed, sounding angry.

"What?!" The war machine snarled incredulously.

"What was that?!" Mega man pressed.

"You think I know?!" Bass snapped, dropping his hands and glaring. "Treble and I came here alone! And we weren't even here for you! I wasn't going to start shit until I saw him!"

Bass pointed at Quint to drive the point in and Treble growled dangerously.

"Eeeeeasssy." Quint cooed, or tried to anyway, as he stood up with palms out.

"The androids!" Aki piped up, and Quint cringed at how everyone looked at the boy before he turned to agent Krantz. "You need to secure your men!"

"Androids?!" She asked, shocked, as was everyone else.

And yet, everyone knew what that meant.

So nobody really had time to react when another firework shot up and Bass, Treble, Mega man, Aki and Quint all leapt up and sprinted to where the stage was shooting them off.

All was officially not going well.

\---

The first agent in uniform screamed like a little girl the moment X touched him.

Though, being fair, that kind of response to getting pulled into the shadow realm by your feet was an appropriate response, albeit not the desired one.

In every squad, there's always the one guy who screamed loudest at the smallest scare. Unofficially, he was called the siren, and was often singled out by his squad mates and put in the highest stress spot so that when the others heard him wailing at the top of his lungs, they knew that something was wrong and would come running.  
Which is what X was hoping to avoid when he grabbed the poor young man closest to the target. Being the former siren himself, (ask Zero) X was often placed on guard duty like the twenty-something guy he hauled into the shadow realm, and he knew too well what being the scaredy cat felt like.

"Good afternoon." X greeted cooly when the poor guy met his eyes. "This isn't going to make sense, but I need you hold this for a minute."

X offered him the end of his red scarf and tenderly eased him to a crouch once the guy shakily gripped the soft garment. After, X reached down and caught the incoming foot of a female officer who was clearly looking for where the siren went off. She tripped and landed in his arms on her stomach, thankfully not screaming the whole way down, and the siren snapped out of his daze when he saw her.

"Anders?!" He sputtered.

"Miller!" She replied when X helped her to her feet again.

"Wonderful! You're both here!" X exclaimed with exaggerated excitement before grabbing their hands and pulling them away from the stage. "Now hurry up before the vertigo makes this difficult!"

"Engaging the enemy!" Zero confirmed over the comm, and X could feel the hands on the clock moving.

Thirteen steps later and the agents started heaving breaths and faltered on their feet. Vertigo was an obscene side-effect of being in the shadow realm, so the slow down was unsurprising, and X, sympathetic to their plight but too busy to offer the comfort of an explanation, pulled them both just far enough that they could make the jump back into the real world without passing out.

The knot in X's gut seized up and he leapt out just as Anders let out a sound between a gulp, a sigh, and a swallow. She collapsed and threw up when her feet hit the gravel, and Miller slumped onto X in shock.  
The Hunter commander stumbled a bit under the weight, but refused to fall.  
He didn't have time to be suffering on the ground, the mission was still go, so X righted Miller and sat him down before rolling Anders over and sitting her up next to her partner.

"Deep breaths. You'll be okay." X assured them as the radio on Miller's shoulder crackled to life. Another officer demanded a status update through the white noise, and X clicked the button to speak through.

"East side perimeter, next to the spare prizes at the hoop game," X reported through the device, not bothering to disguise his voice. "Bring someone with medical training."

X dropped the radio into Miller's lap and didn't wait for a response before sprinting back to the stage.  
He sent out a ping through the comm to let his companions know he was ready, and Axl pinged back an acknowledgement as X ran through the shadow cast by the aforementioned prize box. There was less in the way in the shadow realm, so the shot to Zero and the target was straight.

Zero's shadow rolled away from a forward charge on the part of the target that skidded to a halt less than four meters from X's position, and there lay his chance.  
X dashed and leapt through the target's shadow feet first, plowing into the reploid's chest and sending him flying with a grunt.

"Status!" X demanded once he righted his center of gravity and swallowed the lump threatening to escape his throat.

"So far the only thing he does is gum up his fist and charge at you with it." Zero explained, tossing off the glasses that somehow stayed on after his armor-up while the hat, jacket, and even the scrunchy didn't.

Axl came out of stealth mode behind Zero and added, "Security is mobilizing on the east side. If we're shooting, we got three minutes tops."

'Three minutes?' X thought to himself as the target righted his footing and shook his head with a snarl.

Their opponent was the model of an older boy with a red helmet, gauntlets and boots amidst a grey bodysuit. Which would have been nothing remarkable if the Sand wasn't contorting his silhouette as much as it was.

The compound, as Zero put it, was 'gumming up' his arms to about triple the size of his gauntlets and hands, which X figured was why the target swayed around when he was assessing his new situation. That added weight couldn't be comfortable enough to do more with it other than swing it around at something.

'or to charge with it like a lance.'

Attached to his flanks, and X suspected his shoulders, was a pair of odd growths that hung past his knees, almost like a long coat or like a set of tail feathers. The growths also formed something of a high collar at the neck, partially obstructing the yellow scarf tied there that X didn't miss.

As for the head, another sculpture formed a jagged structure that was little off center and ended up giving the appearance of a spikey, tumorous mohawk. Though, it definitely would've been a bird's crest if it was properly centered.

All around, there was the potential of a very beautiful suit of armor there, but X had seen the pictures of what the boy was supposed to look like, and the lopsided, snarling bird had no business attaching it's appearance to the boy who deserved to be standing next to his family.

"Then let's not stick around to see if he can do anything else." X commanded as he loaded up his shuriken buster and calculated which shots would do the most damage without removing limbs or worse.

The infected reploid brought up a fist and charged forward with a strained growl. In response, X rolled out of the way in the moment contact would have been made and flung three energized shuriken into the growths on the targets back. Zero and Axl followed it up by firing a round from each of their weapons into the offending fist.  
The plasma rounds impacted the compound with a scrunch and a splash that swallowed them whole. The target staggered on his feet, but didn't fall.

Axl's eyes went wide and the gunner jumped away as the target swirled Sand around his other hand and swiped it around himself, casting a line of the compound on the ground that swished and sprung blindly outwards almost like an oil fire.  
Zero lost a hair or two to the move as he dashed away from it, thankfully not more, and the ring at the Target's feet slithered back to it's source as the reploid began readying another charge attack.

'three minutes,' X told himself as he brought up his thumb and middle finger and gave them a snap.

In that instant, the shuriken fired earlier exploded into a cloud of smoke, blinding the reploid and thus forcing him to hold off on his attack.

They didn't have anything to freeze or electrify the compound so the next best thing would have to be disrupting the Sand until it came off of the host on it's own.  
Noise, physical trauma (nothing too damaging), whiplash and general disorientation was how the Sand removed itself from X. If it worked out then, it would do just fine here.

"Legs!" X ordered while the reploid was blind.

On command, Zero and Axl both focused their fire on the reploid's leg armor, causing the Sand to warp, crunch and otherwise distort until it attempted to escape by slithering up onto the upper body, gumming up one of his arms until the reploid almost fell over from the asymmetrical weight.

X focused his energy inward, force feeding it into a single throwing-star until it grew once, twice, three, four times it's normal size while the reploid swung his massive limb around. He was gearing up for another charge attack, possibly with something to follow up.

"Incoming!" Zero advised, diving low to cover for Axl while he was reloading, as well as avoid the impending attack.

X waited for him to come.

The reploid clenched a massive fist and conducted his charge towards him. Ready, X jumped above the infected reploid and with a swing of the shuriken, severed a huge portion of the Sand off the arm.

The massive slice sloughed onto the ground with a slap, not getting any chance to act as X stabbed the large shuriken into the stage between the new pile and the infected reploid, cutting off it's movement.

X energized three more shuriken and gated off the separate mass for containment, casting a shadow with his hands to phase it into the ground where it could expire.  
However, as he did just that, the target reploid began gagging and whining in pain and confusion.

"Huh?" X hummed as the reploid smacked his head with his arms, teeth clenched so tight it was a wonder that they weren't shattering under the pressure.

The target hissed and strained his arm outwards, gargling a scream as he arched his back.  
And just when X thought that horrifying display couldn't possibly get worse, the familiar whine of a buster charging up cut through the air and the reploid's arm reconfigured itself into a shape that spelled DANGER.

"Duck and cover!" X commanded the instant before a massive fireball ripped through the stage.

Zero and Axl went low again, covering their heads and X did much the same until it passed.

Though, when it did, another worrying sound filled the air.

The Hunters unraveled from their positions to bear witness to the fuse to one of the large firework boxes sizzle inside it's respective hole, and an instant later a rocket shot up into the air with a howling screech, popping into golden rain when it's maximum height had been reached.  
The three hunters rose to their feet with grimaces and tight fists.

They just screwed up.

"Since when did he have that handy?!" Axl hissed as the as the second rocket squealed into the air, continuing the fireworks purpose.

The third and fourth rockets shot up simultaneously, and it was when X realized that four fireworks had gone off already that he also noticed the target was just as awkwardly dumbstruck as the rest of them were; staring straight up until the crate of six would run out.

"I don't think he quite knew about that either," X whispered as he gave Zero a tap on the shoulder, turning his attention back to the target.

The fifth rocket shot up in the moment X moved. He dashed into the targets space to grab ahold of his weapon arm, digging his fingers into the mushy purple Sand before leaping up and over to the reploid's backside, hauling the weapon with him and using the mass of it as a brace against his chest to render it unusable. X wrapped his other arm around the Target's waist and held him tightly, nodding to Zero for confirmation.

It was time to move out.

"Axl, secure transport! We're out of time!" X strained, his new catch squirmed and began snarling under his grip, sensing he'd just been caught.

"Got it!" The gunner acknowledged, running to his next position.

"Careful!" Zero ground out as X began the process of sinking back into the shadow realm with their quarry.  
The reploid writhed and fought every second, trying to gain control of his space and keep his head away from the ground as if he knew where he was going.

Once X was shoulder deep in the ground, Zero jumped up above them to lend some shade, allowing X to completely pull the infected reploid into the shadow realm with a POP.

Landing in that black lake took some rolling around to right either of their centers of gravity, but a tight grip on the reploid's weapon and some force from X's legs allowed them to get back on their feet.

The target writhed slower here, disoriented. It sprouted tiny tendrils off from itself to try feeling around, crunching with disappointment and forcing the reploid it was attached to to gurgle pitifully when it couldn't find anything to touch.

"... Uh oh." Zero muttered through the comms.

Well that couldn't be good.

"What?" X asked.

"Looks like you missed a clump," the red hunter explained stressfully.

With that, the target reploid seized and arched his back, tendrils of Sand snaking around X's arms attempting to abandon the current host for a new one.

"I'm a little occupied!" X stressed, putting a boot between himself and the target, dashing up away from its grip.

"I'll take care of it, just thought I'd let you know!" Zero affirmed with a snarl before cutting the line off.

Separate from the infection, X floated down through the shadow realm slowly, assessing the state of his armor. The Sand had left scratch-like dents in his gauntlets from where the tendrils were trying to grab him, but nothing major. A quick diagnostic on the buster mechanism gave no indication that anything had compromised or damaged the device either. Which was a relief X allowed, but only briefly.

The target whipped his body around, looking for the hunter. He seemed to be in more or less the same condition; buster arm, armor a little closer to it's supposed size since the Sand had to compensate for what was cut off. What "clump" had X missed?

His boots quietly touched the ground not far from the reploid. Regardless of what he'd missed, X would have to get the him moving.

The original plan was to remove the Sand from the reploid as quickly as possible and to distribute it into the shadow realm so it couldn't hurt anyone. Then the Hunters were to take a getaway vehicle and drive to an isolated location to hide out until officials would hypothetically put two-and-two together and come to them to negotiate.

Now it looked like they were going to have to take the infected reploid and rest of the Sand with them to their safehouse.

X readied his shuriken buster to bait a chase out of the target.

But...

\But thE crOokEd maN Was sad./

A roughness rolled itself into a snake and slithered around the Hunter's spine. X lurched forward, choking on his breath as it squeezed. He cupped a hand across middle with a heaving breath.

\And Oonce, he hAd a tHouGht. Why shoUld he be cRooked, when Others; they were not???????/

No. No. Nothing was there. X threw his head back, tipping his chin up high with a gasp. Wooziness spun his mind, rang his ears and tunneled his vision.

"Vertigo," X told himself. "It's the vertigo."

The infected reploid's buster whirred again to life, which is when X realized he'd clenched his eyes tightly shut with his thoughts.

"Focus!" X loudly chided himself, forcing his eyes back wide open, ducking left and dashing further to escape.

The fireball unleashed from the target's weapon shriveled and turned dark in the air of the black lake where X previously stood. It withered into scattered pops of plasma gas, leaving the smell of burning waste in it's wake.

\EveRything w4s WORTHLESS, he h3aVed a grea7 big si9h, and Went and f0und a rop3, and t1ed it to the sky./

"Focus."  
X squared his footing, swallowing his sickness and blinking his aim back to standard. The target stood before him, poised and practiced as the soldiers in his unit were.  
Though, that comparison in mind, a new development in his state of dress wouldn't easily be excused:  
Dark brown hair swished in the shadow realm, as though underwater. Shade cast itself over drunk, unfocused eyes and lines of purple puppeteered a snarl across the boy's face.

"That 'clump' was your helmet," X concluded, voice wet.

In response, the target gurgled a frustrated yell before running towards X with manic momentum, somewhat uncharacteristic of what the possession had been doing to him before.

Something was up.

X dove away from the target and rolled back to the balls of his feet, running. The reploid continued yelling as he followed closely.  
Twice the air around X's head broke with a plasma pellet burning through the shadows of the black lake. The smell stoked his nausea and he swallowed again as he led the reploid away. 

Within painful seconds a friendly blip came through the code, zooming through the dirt above. Axl's signature wove past rocks and glided expertly around the fair's perimeter; there was X's window, and it was coming fast.

The Hunter commander grit his teeth and dug deep. He charged but a foot further ahead then suddenly stopped, got down, and tackled the target before he could halt his own momentum. The reploid coughed out in surprise as his back hit the ground, various assenting crunches followed. The Sand attempted to reconcile what was happening as X dug fingers into the false armor and heaved himself to his feet.  
Tendrils of Sand curled around his wrists as he hauled the reploid up above his head. The Hunter strained with the weight, feeling his joints creak as he looked the boy in the eye.

Bright blue looked back, confused and distorted with infection and a vague agitation.  
The effects of the Sand inside a reploid weren't dissimilar to the effects of substance abuse on a human; causing blackouts and malnutrition in as a trade-off for temporary strength.

Those familiar blue eyes couldn't see X as he held him there. Weren't processing anything happening in front of him. X swallowed bitter bile at the knowledge that his own eyes were the exact same as he mercilessly attacked his friends and uncannily familiar strangers.

"You have my father's eyes," X thought wistfully, remembering the soft face he saw when he eventually woke up. The same face as the boy in blue from the pictures.  
Brothers, red and blue.

"I know that much, but not your name," X added ruefully. "I'm sorry for that... And for this!"

The Hunter commander bent his knees and sprung into the air, throwing the boy forward onto their ride out as it passed. The Sand pulled X along as he intended it to, landing them both on the SUV.

Once they were solidly on board, as solid as going thirty three miles per hour off-road without a windshield or seatbelt could be, X worked to claw off the compound as it continued to wrap itself around his hands. 

Worry stung his nerves as the compound stuck and slithered away from his efforts, trying to trap him. X shook as welling panic joined the mix of vertigo and nausea. He looked from his hands, to the target as he wobbled and sneered, back, above them, below them... Above.

"Find a rope," X gritted out, bringing up a boot as the growths on the target's back climbed upward onto his shoulders and fanned out in a threatening display.  
X used the bottom of his boot to scrape the Sand off one of his hands, getting it stuck to the metal greave instead. When enough of the compound clumped off, he drew an energy kunai from a pin on his belt, using that to cut more from his other hand.

The target reeled and made to charge when X severed the string between them, but hesitated when X flung the kunai in his general direction and detonated it into smoke in mid air.

"And tie it to the sky," X muttered, taking a breath and holding it. He reached into the shadow on which he travelled, and pushed through the border between realms.

There was dirt, metal, plastic, rubber, cloth, faux leather, and finally air...

He choked on it.

\------

"I'll take care of it, just thought I'd let you know!"

That voice.  
Masculine, a slight Germanic accent, a stern attitude, but with a smoothness that would be considered attractive to some, and threatening to others.

Bass pinged for Treble to scan for allied bot signatures as they approached the fireworks stage. Human officers cleared the path of bystanders and he got an eyeful of a signature that both scared him and pissed him off.

DWN unit-Z was backstage, moving around quickly, probably the reason why some fireworks went off a minute or so ago.

He was there when the attack happened.

He was there when Roll disappeared.

Quint and whatever he was doing here could wait.

Bass leapt up onto the stage platform and darted past the sliding walls for the area in the back, buster at the ready. Two shots rang out from a weapon and Bass found himself essentially walking in on something he didn't anticipate.

Unit Z leapt up and over a strange mass that had Bass stepping in front of Treble to shield his companion.  
It was slushy, it was dark purple, and it made the sound of wet crunching gravel as it moved around on it's own.  
The miasma that was all over the blue android downtown. The shit that took out the bus. It was still out and about?! He was still fighting it?!

"Whoa! How are we supposed to fight that?!" The shinier dweeb, the guy with the fancy lights in his costume,(fit that into configuration, WAR,) yelped out from Bass' flank, clearly unnerved by how it moved with with it's long, whipping tendrils no thicker than a bendy straw.

Though, honestly? Same. That wet grinding sound set Bass' nerves on edge.  
But if experience served, if the enemy was slushy, or liquidious in any capacity, either electrocution or freezing would be handy.

Unit Z landed in front of them, looked over his shoulder, made a face, then growled "keine zeit," under his breath before ducking under a long swipe on the part of the mass.

"Ideally, you don't!" The red android jeered, firing plasma rounds from a pistol into the mass, only to have it absorb the shots. "So get out of here!"

"As if!" Bass growled, sidestepping a swipe that, correct him if he was wrong, was blind.

If it swallowed plasma rounds faster than an overworked human with coffee, then freezing sounded like a safer bet than electrocuting it.

"Damn, but I don't have any ice chips!"

"For what?!" The main dweeb called as he came into the picture, barely getting missed by another blind swipe. "What the?!"

"I don't know why I bother!" Unit Z yelled. He leapt up over the mass with a charged shot in the pistol and fired it into the miasma's top, squishing it temporarily before landing next to the dweebs.

"You're supposed to freeze it?" Said the shinier dweeb before he held up his buster arm. "I can do that! Activate Iceman schematics!"

"You what?!" Bass, unit Z, Quint (when did he get here?) and Mega man all shouted when the shinier Mega man swapped out his blue appearance for a white and light green pallet with a hugely different looking buster arm.

The miasma scrunched into a blob and looked like it was preparing another attack when the dweeb pointed his buster at it and fired a projectile that froze the mass on impact, and Bass felt his jaw hit the floor.

"Ha! Nice job kid!" Unit Z congratulated the shinier dweeb with a big grin and a smack to the shoulder. At first, an error threatened to run through Bass' system at the friendliness of the gesture, but it rectified itself when he detected a small energy surge and a copy ability turned unit Z's armor from hot red to a greyish blue.

'Of course!' Bass thought with a mental face palm. 'The old man gave him that ability too! Clever bastard!'

The android dashed forward and jammed his fingers into the ice block, hefting it up and grinning like an idiot.

"Now to the rest of it." He said to no one in particular before sprinting away.

"Hey! Where you going?!" Bass called after his little brother, taking off running himself.

Bass heard the dweeb squad giving chase behind him, and he used it as an excuse to drive himself and Treble harder. Man, there were too many of them and Bass felt like he'd have a stroke if he thought about that fact too hard.  
The wolf gave a bark and pinged Bass to look up around the nearby go-cart set up. When he did, the android was climbing onto a scaffold in a weird, jumping sort of climbing style, and Bass was sure his eyes were glitching again, cause who the hell climbed like that?  
Fuck.

Anyway, he pinged Treble to give him a boost, and the wolf obliged, springing his master into the air the moment Bass put a boot on his back.  
He didn't quite make it to the top of the scaffold, but he was able to get his hands on a horizontal post that he could use to hoist himself the rest of the way up. With a bit of effort, and some yelling from the dweebs below, Bass lifted himself onto the wooden platform, glaring at unit Z the moment he saw that plume of blond hair facing his way while the android looked about for something.  
He had the gall to look hella confused doing it too. Pissed Bass off.

The war machine pointed his buster from a kneeling position at the android, teeth grit tightly, and it was at that moment unit Z realized that company had followed him up.

"Oh, come on. Really?!" The android groaned, training his pistol at Bass. "I don't have the ammo or the patience for this, kid, so stand down now!"

"Me neither, and don't call me kid!" Bass snarled in kind. "I got questions and you're gonna answer them, freak!"

Unit Z glanced behind him briefly, considering his options, and kept his face neutral when he replied.

"It's been a weird couple of days. Might not have the answer you're looking for."

"Bullshit, how'd you get outta containment?!" Bass sneered, crouching up and edging closer.

Unit Z flicked his bangs out of his face and drew his brows down as Bass crept closer.

"The truck got hijacked." He shrugged. "Wasn't my idea."

"Fine." Bass growled, hearing a ladder being scaled nearby. Must've been one of the dweebs. Well, better to outnumber Wily's golden boy than not. But first.

"Downtown, during the fight, a girl with blonde hair in red clothes got kinda too close to the action for comfort, disappeared after the smackdown, sound familiar?"

Unit Z slightly lowered his gun in order to look Bass up and down before his mouth hung open slightly.

"You're the boyfriend." He said evenly.  
Bass felt his patience snapping.

The war machine didn't like the word on a good day, accurate as it might've been to someone, but he definitely didn't like how this little shit jumped to that conclusion so damn fast.

"You fucker! Where is she?!"

"I don't know where she is," the android stated firmly, leveling his gun again as Bass started charging a shot. "We didn't kidnap anyone who was there. I don't have time for this!"

Bass felt his eye twitch with anger.

There was no doubt in Unit Z's voice.  
Tension, annoyance, exasperation maybe, but not doubt. No niggling thoughts slurring words like a guilty man lying through his teeth.

He was telling the truth.

Bass didn't have anything for that.

"There's nowhere for you to run!" Mega man's voice piped up from Bass' left. "Put the weapon down and come quietly!"

Fucking optic sensors, he couldn't see him there, but the dweeb was definitely standing next to him.

Fuck.

"Wish I could," unit Z shrugged, creeping closer to the edge. Bass was getting tired of holding that charged shot. "No time."

Keine zeit.

"You're gonna make time then!" Bass shouted just as a car horn somewhere behind the android honked twice. 

Unit Z glanced back, bending his knees down. Fucker was gonna jump for it, but not before sharply flicking his eyes back to Bass and firing a freezing shot into the war machine's buster arm.  
The bassnium ammunition stopped powering up and Bass' arm suddenly weighed too much to keep steady.  
He felt like he was moving in slow motion, throwing his arm aside and jumping forward as unit Z abruptly straightened out and leapt up off the scaffold in an arc, flipping in the air and landing on a passing car that sped off the moment he was on board.

"Dammit!" Bass howled.

"Was that agent Krantz's car?" Mega man asked, confused and as if Bass would fucking know.

"Doesn't matter!" Bass snapped before putting two fingers to his mouth and whistling loudly as he ran to the edge of the scaffold and leapt off himself. "Treble! They're not getting away!"

\-----

"Axl, secure transport! We're out of time!" X ordered as the infected reploid began windmilling his free arm, foaming at the mouth and snarling like a rabid animal.

"Got it!" The gunner acknowledged as he disengaged and took off to initiate phase three of the plan.

According to the contents of the manilla folder, a gunmetal gray SUV should have been parked not too far from the fireworks stage where the target had been hanging out.  
And 'not too far' translated to about sixteen meters, as the big, clearly used and loved, car was parked on the outside edge of the designated parking area. Notes from the folder implied that Axl's fine furry friend had stolen the key for it and placed it in the dirt next to the passenger side door, though, that Axl could think of, they didn't say anything about security watching over the vehicle like a bunch of meerkats on lookout.  
Then again, the target did accidentally set off some fireworks prematurely.

Shit.

Hoo Boy, good thing X can't Actually read minds.

The thing to do here would be to probably cause a diversion and lure the four- no, five, humans away from the car. And fast.  
There was a strategy for this that Red cooked up when red alert was in it's infancy, though it was designed for an urban setting, so improvising was going to be required for such an open area.

Step 1: keep hidden.

Axl checked the gauge on his sub tank and found it at 60% power. Good. He could use stealth mode and stay cloaked for another 20 minutes at most.

Step 2: try to lead one of the sentries away from the group.

Axl cleared his throat and kicked a closely parked car hard enough to set the alarm off before shuffling his feet in the gravel loudly and grunting, "Hey! Get your hands off me!"

Step 3: keep hidden.

The gunner jumped behind the next car in the lot as not one but two of the officers dashed over to see what the ruckus was.

Step 4: repeat until most of the guards are away from the vehicle.

Two more guys split off to see which car just had a tire loudly blow out. While the last guy nervously drew his taser from the holster and paced to the back of the SUV.

Step 5: grab and go, and try not to get shot.

Axl toed his way around to the front end of the car, flinching at every other noise his boots made against the gravel. The last guard twitched and trained his weapon in Axl's general direction, but didn't fire. Briefly, he let himself be impressed that the guy wasn't wasting ammo over nothing. Meant that he was trained well, even though Axl could tell he was sweating.

"X would like a guy like you in his unit," Axl thought to himself before he grabbed his buster pistol, flipped it to grab the stock, ran up to the agent, and batted the taser out of his hand with the butt of his gun in the same moment Axl gave him a jab to the throat with his other hand.  
The guy gasped for air and dropped to his knees, out of the fight.

"Or maybe not. Isn't like I'm in charge of that."

In the clear for now, Axl scanned the ground for the key, plucked it from the dirt, unlocked the passenger side door, tentatively opened it and jumped onto the center console.

He heard the other guards exclaiming and yelling for him to get out of the car as he pulled himself into the driver's seat and started the engine before ducking his head down.  
Just because they couldn't see him, doesn't mean they wouldn't start shooting the real guns.  
His boots made it impossible to reach the pedals, so he quickly disabled stealth mode and armored down. After, Axl shifted it into drive, slammed his foot on the gas, and tried not to whoop as he took off with the passenger door hanging open.

The gunner rolled the driver window down and maneuvered the car to the restricted off-road perimeter of the fair, searching for Zero's curtain of blond hair around the stage where he left him.  
Briefly, the car shook from somewhere below him and, while at first he thought he might've hit something, his helmet received a ping from X saying he was ready to proceed. Which meant that X had jumped shadows again and made it to the car.

Great. Now for the big guy.

Axl's eye caught the glimmering shimmer of gold on top of a nearby scaffolding and he honked the horn twice before hitting the accelerator, forcing the gears into all-wheel drive. He held his breath and didn't let it out until he saw golden ribbon fly off the plank, do a flip, and felt the entire vehicle shake when Zero landed on the roof.

"Yeah! Gotcha!" Axl cheered.

"A little more warning next time, you little shit!" Zero, ever the critic, shouted as he fumbled to grip the sun roof above the Gunner's head.

"Language!" Axl chided lightly, turning the wheel to make for their next coordinates. "That's another zenny for the jar!"

"You're gonna need a bank vault!" The red hunter grunted sarcastically, bouncing around from the SUV going over uneven soil. "Where's X?!"

On cue, X phased his torso and head through the passenger seat with his back facing Axl, hunched over and coughing so hard he gripped the armrest for stability.

Honestly Axl wasn't sure what was freakier; the fact that he'd never seen X get sick and suddenly he sounded like he was hacking up a lung, or that he was essentially arms and a torso in a chair making noise like a monster from another manga back home.

"You okay?!" The gunner asked instead.

"Just fine," X hissed, scrubbing at his mouth with an arm before looking up and tilting his head sideways. "Who left this door open?"  
Then the hunter commander reached out and pulled the swinging door shut.

Whoops, Axl had forgotten about that.

"X I got an idea!" Zero piped up. "When we get to the next point, try to pass the reploid to one of us, and then, when the Sand tries to advance, we'll pass him back to you!"

What in the shitballs kind of a plan was that?

"That's a terrible idea!" X called, looking at the red hunter through the side mirror.

"Axl, open up!" Zero commanded, rapping a knuckle on the glass above them.

Curious where he was going with this, Axl scanned the buttons and levers amidst the steering wheel until a button signaling the sun roof caught his eye. He thumbed it down and felt a cross breeze lead from the open window on his side up out the new hole in the roof as it opened. Once it was wide enough, Zero dropped in a hunk of ice onto the flat plastic center console between the seats. X turned around and eyeballed it and Axl have it a glance. He couldn't tell exactly what, but there was something vaguely spherical frozen solid inside the block.

"I copied an ice shot from a bot back there." Zero explained, grunting as Axl ran over another bump. "It's limited but better than nothing!"

In their line of work, 'limited' meant one of two things; there was only so much ammo for the weapon, or there were only so many different ways it could be used as an advantage. Which was worrying, but they had been working with 'limited' already. Where else was Zero going with this?

"If you can shadow-phase him through the ground before it re-integrates back to his body, then it'll split the Sand like pulling on dough! Less dough means less control over the host and it'll weaken every time!" Zero called out.

"And the ice shot will ensure that the Sand can't escape, regardless if it's in the shadow realm or no!" X concluded. "Okay! Not that terrible anymore!"

So if Axl was hearing this right, the updated plan was to essentially play a game of hot potato that also involved Zero cutting the skin off every time he'd catch it with a knife. Except the "potato" was a small reploid, and the "skin" of the potato was the Sand, and the "knife" was Zero's new ability that involved being fired from a gun.

"Do me last! I'm driving here!" The gunner requested as the insanity of the plan sunk in.

"Fine with me," Zero agreed, poking his head through the hole. "So, X where's the target?!"

Before X responded, something bumped him up in the seat that wasn't anything Axl drove over, and the commander's eyes frowned with palpable discomfort. He held up a finger and simply said; "One second." After, he leaned back and phased through the chair and pinged the comm that he was ready.

Thinking about it, if X could actually go through walls or whatnot in that armor as long as there were shadows present, then he could hypothetically get into any room at HQ, permission be damned.

"Yeah that's never not going to be creepy." He decided, turning the wheel so they could dodge the pink fireball coming at them from behind.

\---

Aki was going up the scaffold ladder when the future android jumped down onto a passing car that sped off. Which struck him as odd, considering all the effort the guy had put into getting up there, but he wasn't exactly in the position to be asking that one.

"Was that agent Krantz's car?" Aki heard this world's Mega man say in a rush.

The FBI lady?

"Doesn't matter!" Yelled the robot in black before a shrill whistle sounded. "Treble! They're not getting away!"

Boots rocked the scaffold as the black armored robot (Bass, was it?) ran and leapt off the edge, landing mid-air on his big purple dog that apparently had rocket powered paws.  
The pair flew off in pursuit of the android, and Aki felt himself tense up on the ladder.

"Uh oh."

"Well, that could certainly be trouble." Mini pointed out, working to calculate a method of catching up.

Another high whistle shrieked through the air when Mini was midway through the numbers, and Aki heard a second pair of boots thump off the platform just as quickly as the first.

"Rush! Jet mode!" The other Mega man called out as his red companion appeared from somewhere behind Aki, catching the blue bomber on his back and transforming his legs into jet boosters before Aki's very eyes.

"Or, maybe not." Mini amended as the pair rocketed away.

"Rush doesn't have anything like that back home," Aki thought out loud. "Maybe later I'll talk with Suna about an upgrade."

"Get down from there!" Quint called from the base of the ladder, drawing Aki's attention from his thoughts. "Danger's gone, we need to mobi-gize... Mog... Move out!"

"You're kidding me! Wasn't that the zombie stuff the Androids need to contain?!" Aki protested, sliding down the ladder.

"The Sand, yes," Quint cleared his throat as his words started coming out staticky. "And fedi-federal aigents are all over, so We have to go."

"Didn't you hear him? 'to the rest of it' he said." Aki pointed out, deciding not to comment on Quint's stutter. "That means that he's going after more of that stuff. He'll need help!"

"He has help," The green robot countered. "Who do you tho-think was briving?! Come on!"

"Quint!" Aki protested as Quint grabbed a hold of his arm, pulling him away from the open with some strength that had Mini sputtering. "C'mon, hold up! We can't just cut and run here!"

"We're not," Quint replied firmly. "Our job of keep-ping the crowd away from them is acc-cc--.... Finix... Done! Done. Unless we want-t t-to get caught by the F-B-I, mich we don't, then there's no point in staying."

Quint and his buddy's agenda. Aki didn't want a part of it. He had to either get away from the green robot or convince him to come with, and since this was Quint, that could've very well been a trying task.

He saw Quint throwing those punches; the cold, mechanical precision downplayed by the stutter that was only apparent if the guy was talking, not cracking down.

If pressed, Aki wasn't sure if he'd entirely deny that Quint almost reminded him of Obsidian's lap dog from back home. Of course, by different dimension rules, if there were different Mega men across other worlds, then there had to be alternate... Whatever his name was anyway.

Bass seemed the more obvious comparison, what with the black armor and the bad attitude, but after squaring up with him in person, that just didn't fit. Something about Quint, and Aki really wasn't sure what it was, just screamed out to him that there was something there he'd seen before.  
The green robot wasn't as sadistic or remotely as enthusiastic about the action, but the cold indifference to hurting someone else and his general distaste towards Aki were no comfort.

And, not unlike like that certain jerk, it was still very possible to get him talking, and as much as Aki liked working alone, he had a feeling actually getting away from Quint would be more difficult than reasoning with him.

"That was a copy ability, right mini?" Aki asked, thinking back to that clap on the shoulder as a segway.

"Who?" Quint asked, pulling them behind the cover of a barrier made of tires for the go cart track.

"Sure was boss," Mini confirmed, crossing his arms. "Probe went right through the system and grabbed the chip code right in front of me! I feel violated."

"What if the Sand stuff turns the red guy into a zombie?" Aki pressed, throwing a hand up for emphasis as Quint stopped and gave Aki his attention. "Then nobody else'll have a weapon against it! We can't just let them go! They need help!"

"That won't happen," Quint hissed.

"What if it does?!" Aki pressed.

"It. Won't." The green robot growled through grit teeth, tightening his grip painfully.

Could that be what it was?

"Say it does, what do you think would happen?" Aki asked with a swallow, inching closer by a hair to give the impression that he wasn't getting scared. "Disaster, right? You willing to chance it? You think what's-his-face wants that to happen?"

Something clicked in Quint's head there at the mention of his boss, same kind of thing Obsidian's sidekick did. The turning of a gear, or the shift of a piston. The green robot perked up his chin and gave a glance around before regarding Aki again.

"And how were you planning on catching up with them?" He asked, easing up on his grip.

"My plan was to use this," Aki replied, a little relieved that Quint was being negotiable. "Quick switch, airman schematics!"

The change from ice to air sent tingles up Aki's spine, bringing with it some imbedded warnings about the personality augments and how airman's always gave them trouble.  
Aki took a breath as an acknowledgement and showed Quint the turbine buster

The thought of using it to get away from Quint crossed Aki's mind as the green robot scrutinized the tool.

"Don't do it boss," Mini advised. "He's still on your side. Worst case, maybe, but mind where you point it. Have Got to work on this one."

Aki agreed and clenched his jaw to keep a slight, faux smile on his face. Impatiently, he waited for Quint's response while the foreign airman personality protocols faintly hoped for a negative reaction.

The green robot brought his head up, tilted it, gently pushed the turbine aside, and let go of Aki's other arm in the same motion he used to put his boot through the wall of tires next to them, catching Aki and Mini both off guard.

"You'll never catch sthem with just a sh-single turbine," Quint posited, beckoning Aki to come with him as he trotted across the dirt track laid out for the go-carts.

With security trying to keep everything calm in the face of running robots and a firework mishap, the carts were not necessarily abandoned, but could very easily be up for grabs.

"I knew you'd come around Quint!" Aki laughed as Quint unhooked a charger cable and disengaged his large boots to climb into the driver's seat of a blue two persons cart.

"Save your breath," Quint ordered as he settled himself behind the wheel. "This thing onl-ly has so puch meower, help me sha-save shome by turning that turbic-turbline of yours to give us a boost."

The green bot tested the pedals and gave him a thumbs up as the 'go ahead'. Aki gripped the passenger side and pointed his air buster to their back, grinning despite himself.

"With pleasure!"

The dirt and gravel landscape was not at all pleasant to be speeding through the way they were, but Aki's airman schematic was paying off. Quint's driving was a good gamble so far too.  
When the dot of the big SUV the androids made their escape with was no longer a dot, Quint pulled through the dirt onto veins of softer soil, reducing the bumpiness of the drive.

"Aim at Bass! Get him out of the sky!" Quint called out, taking a hand off the wheel to point out the black armored robot to Aki.

Bass fired off a giant pink fireball at the SUV, and Aki tensed as the vehicle swerved violently to avoid the shot. The blond guy on top swung onto the side of the car, looking like he barely caught hold of one of the door handles so he wouldn't fall completely off.

The Mega Man from this world was flying low, trying to get closer to the car. Aki liked to think he knew himself, so the blue bomber was probably trying either get the driver to pull over or to shoot out one of the tires.

Aki reverted back to his default mega buster for the sake of control and considered his aim.  
Bass hitting the androids or the other Mega Man, accidentally or otherwise, would be bad news on it's own, so the jerk needed to go down.

The conversation about ammo styles after the dart game came to mind as he brought the buster up and squinted at where it would go if and when he fired.  
Mini helped with the calculations, suggesting that Aki, "Put it about ten feet ahead of 'im. The shot should intercept and knock 'im right offa the rocket-dog!"

Aki eyeballed about where 10ft would be, darn geometry homework finally paying off, and let him have it.  
The bright blue projectile cut through the air and hit it's mark. 

Bass wobbled and fell....  
about fifteen feet before his companion made a lightning fast turnaround in midair and caught his master, continuing forward like nothing happened.  
To make that disappointment worse, Bass' head turned down towards the go cart and Aki could feel the burning glare the black armored machine was giving them from all the way down there.

"Uh oh." Aki muttered as a barrage of pellets started raining down around them.

It was Quint's turn to swerve a vehicle and Aki's to kind of dangle off the side. Maybe five rounds struck his armor in different spots, but thankfully not the hand keeping him on the cart. He was probably going to have a welt or two somewhere awkward as a result, but hey, he wasn't in the dirt.

"That didn't work!" Mini yelled, spinning uncontrollably in his chair.

"Di-djuo miss?!" Quint ground out through a clenched jaw, definitely unhappy.

Aki blinked and made to pull himself back into the passenger seat, checking on his driver. A crack spiderwebbed across the right side of the visor Quint sported, with a telling burn next to his earpiece.

Shot in the head and still driving.

Yep. Quint was officially the Terminator.

"Eyes up boss!" Mini suggested stressfully as the pellets suddenly stopped coming down.  
Anticipating a charge shot, Aki turned up his gaze back at Bass to see if he could nullify it. Only what he saw was that the androids were shooting off rapid fire rounds of their own.

Somebody had joined the blond android on the roof of the car.  
While Aki couldn't pick out exact details, he could tell that this android was sporting black armor and a bright red scarf that trailed with the direction of the wind.  
He was the one with the fully automatic buster suppressing Bass' assault with downright suffocating levels of ammo in the air while the blond dude had his attention on shooing away the other Mega man with his gun.

"Try again!" Quint commanded, pushing down on the accelerator to keep up. "He's distract-ed!"

"Knocking him down isn't gonna cut it I guess." Mini grimaced, recalculating the shot. "Bass is the sort to get right back up."

Just like Aki.

While he did that, Aki squinted and did a double take at the SUV as a mass slithered into view around the android with the scarf.

He couldn't speak to what the androids were thinking, but they didn't seem too fazed about throwing something big and shaped like a star at the other Mega man to get him away from their car before jumping up to wrestle with the zombie Sand stuff.

"Holy cow!" Aki sputtered.

Was that really happening over there?

"Aki!" Quint yelled. "Shoot him down!"

"We'll never get to help 'em while Bass is still in persuit," Mini agreed.

He shook his head, grit his teeth and looked up at Bass.  
His dog would just catch him again if they knocked him off, so basically...

Aki didn't like this a bit.

"I don't like it either boss, but if you fire along this trajectory, you should just be able to get the dog by his foot."

What a clinical way to put it.

Aki felt like a stranger in his own skin as he automatically lined up the buster barrel with Mini's calculated crosshair, and wasn't even sure it was his own will that activated the trigger mechanism.

Also, Mini either lied or miscalculated, because Bass somersaulted in the air when the shot struck his companion in the shoulder. The wolf howled out in pain and, feeling sick, Aki closed his eyes and turned away so he wouldn't watch them fall.

Something very very wrong pegged him in the back of the neck and squeezed. His mouth twitched and his arms grew heavy.

Justifications ran through his head and made him sweat bullets, but everything just felt too tight all at once and he couldn't breathe.

What was he doing?!

"What are you doing?!" Quint yelled out.

Or... Wait. Quint was behind him driving. That came from in front.

Aki forced open his eyes and there, flying on Rush next to the cart was this world's Mega man. Wide blue eyes looked at Aki, then at the cart, Aki's buster, and narrowed past him at the green robot driving.

"Quint!" Mega man called out angrily.

"You're welcome!" Quint yelled back, steering to avoid a rock.

They sounded identical, was Aki hearing that right?

"Kid!" Mega Man called, waving for Aki's attention. "You need to get away from him! You're making a mis-"

Mega man didn't get to finish, as a yellow pellet whizzed past Aki's head and struck him in the chest. The blue bomber fell gracelessly from Rush's back to the dirt beneath them, prompting the dog to bark and whine in distress, slowing down to stay with his master.

Aki looked back at the green robot, seeing that he had a buster arm of his own still stiffly pointed out at where Mega man was, a trail of steam whipping in the wind as Quint kept driving.  
The bot pressed his lips into a neutral, emotionless line, and Aki lost it.

"THAT'S IT!"

He lunged for the steering wheel and turned it sharply out of Quint's control, part of him enjoying greatly the surprised little "oh" Quint let out before the cart's wheels were pointing up.

They rolled over four or five times before Aki fell out, landing on his arm. Pain smothered his entire right side and he hissed out a whine.  
Druel and snot and tears threatened to escape but, as much as Aki wanted to wail and gripe until the pain stopped, not a peep came out. And not one would, because Mega man doesn't cry.

So, instead, he bit his tongue, clenched a tight fist, punched it into the ground, and pushed himself back up.

"That could've been worse," Aki mumbled as he climbed to his feet. "Right Mini?"

He got no reply.

"Mini?"

His little helper was silent.

"Aki..?"

Aki whipped around and sure enough, on his knees a few yards away looking directly at him, was Quint. The spiderweb of cracks in his visor had spread from the right side to the left with a few chips missing from the bottom, and the guy was positively covered in dirt.  
Aki didn't see him fall out, but it looked like Quint had landed a touch harder. Though, with that in mind, it'd be nice if he was acting even half as sore as Aki felt.  
He just crouched there, not moving an inch, the visible parts of his face giving no indication that he was particularly upset about what had just happened.

"Sorry Quint." Aki grunted to fill the tense silence, sounding a bit more smug than he intended.

"S... Sorry?" Quint sputtered.

"You shot Mega man." Aki shrugged, half because it was true, and half to prompt a response from Mega mini. "I can't just let that fly."

At the explanation, the corners of Quint's mouth turned down and his mouth hung open a bit. That could've been hurt or disappointment, but one couldn't tell while the bot still had his eyes covered.

The lack of a definitive answer to that caused more stress to pinch Aki's shoulders as something started to boil in Quint's demeanor, tempting him to back away.

"I unders-stand." The green robot said eventually, tone flat as he rose to his feet. "You're het-gat..Be-Traying me and Compromising the mission."

Quint slowly annunciated each syllable to every word he was saying.

Betraying.

Compromising.

Maybe it was supposed to be a work around for the stutter, but it was so accusatory it hurt.

"Don't say it like that." Aki ordered firmly, trying to save face and stay on his feet. "I'm not the bad guy here."

"You're right," Quint agreed, cold, staticky and mechanical. "But there is no other way to say it, Mega Man."

Quint punctuated his statement by forming and pointing his buster at Aki. Green, mean, unreadable and imposing behind that cracked visor, Aki floundered a second before jumping to the ground to wait for the shot to whizz over his head and go from there.

It never came though. Instead, Aki had a frog's eye view of the green robot getting tackled to the ground by the other Mega man without any rounds discharging at all.

"You can't change, can you Quint?!" Mega Man growled as he twisted Quint's arm behind his back to restrain him. The green robot hissed at the pain and the Mega man looked up at Aki. "Are you okay?!"

It took him a second, but once Aki processed what had happened, a wave of relief washed over him.

"Me?" Aki replied, getting back to his feet. "Yeah, I'm fine." Pain shot through his back and his arm and he winced. The other Mega man furrowed his brows with concern, but Aki waved him off.

"He just kinda spooked me there," Aki understated. "But are you okay? He shot you!"

The other Mega man nodded without issue and whistled, prompting Rush to come over and lay his weight on Quint's back to prevent escape.

"I've had worse," the Mega man shrugged before waving to someone behind Aki.

"Ohhhh, man what happened?" Mini groaned in Aki's head. Typical that he woke up After the crapstorm passed.

"We're going to need you to give a statement," the other Mega man prompted as Aki looked over his shoulder and saw a bunch of human officers and agents in uniforms running towards them from cars parked in the dirt.

"That's alright," Aki sighed. "I did tell you that I'd rather work with officials." He turned back to regard his new ally, but noticed a scrunch to the blue bomber's eyebrows.

"Something wrong?" Aki asked.

The other Mega man looked over his shoulder at the dirt landscape behind him, frowned, then hung his head with a heavy sigh.

"Looks like they got away."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this took almost a year and you know it clap your hands.
> 
> *Clap clap*
> 
> If it's longer than you thought it'd be then clap your hands.
> 
> *Clap clap*
> 
> If your sick of not uploading, cause it isn't done you know, if it took almost a year and you know it clap your hands.
> 
> *Clap clap*
> 
> So why so long?
> 
> Uhhhh... There was holidays, and boredom, and fat trimming, and editing, and day job, holy crap day job, and roommate drama.
> 
> I like how this has come out, but to save myself in the future, I'll try not to make any other parts of iiitstwbcap quite this long.
> 
> Hope everyone had a good halloween, thanksgiving, christmas, Hanukkah, new year, and valentines day.

**Author's Note:**

> Posting a little later than I wanted. Will try to finish up the rest of this one soon. September's just been busy. Prepare for spooks!


End file.
